Imagine if your social stature and your livelihood were dependent on your ability to write poetry and refer to the work of other poets. If there were poetry competitions among the elite that decided one’s worthiness. Or if the entire direction of a nation could be changed via 31 syllables.
Japanese waka, a 31-syllable precursor to haiku, held just this kind of sway for several centuries. Its role in a power play between two imperial factions is at the heart of Kendra Strand’s current book project,
An Unfamiliar Place: Poetry, Landscape, and Power in Medieval Japanese Travel Writing. Strand (Asian & Slavic Languages & Literatures, CLAS) is an Obermann Fellow-in-Residence this fall who is focused on three men who were writing between 1350 and 1375 in the Nanbokuchō era: Sōkyū, Nijō Yoshimoto, and Ashikaga Yoshiakira. A Buddhist priest, a statesman, and a shōgun, respectively, these men knew each other and alluded to one another in their writing.
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