Ōtomo no Kuronushi, immortal of poetry

In Japan in 905, a highly influential poetry anthology established six immortals of poetry. Ōtomo no Kuronushi, a ninth-century Japanese poet, was among those six immortal poets.[1]

Kuronushi lasted as an immortal of poetry less than two centuries.  A highly influential Japanese literary work from the early eleventh century did not include Kuronushi in a list of thirty-six immortals of poetry.  Moreover, a poem by Kuronushi wasn’t included in an anthology of one hundred classical Japanese poems, each from a different classical Japanese poet, written about 1235.[2]

While Kuronushi lived into the 890s, his poetic reputation was under threat even by 905.  A compiler of the poetry anthology that came to define the six immortals of poetry criticized Kuronushi for being vulgar and provincial.  By the thirteenth century his poetry was described as “like a mountaineer with a load of wood on his back stopping to rest under cherry blossoms.”[3]  Criticism of Kuronushi was remembered as his immortal status died.

Among the six immortal poets, Kuronushi was not the only one to be forgotten.  Three others mentioned with him in 905 also faded in literary status.  But those other immortals did not disappear from the lists of immortals as quickly as Kuronushi did. Ōtomo no Kuronushi has a distinguished position among the six immortals of poetry.[4]

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Notes:

[1] The six immortals of poetry (rokkasen) were listed in the Kokin Wakashu. Ōtomo no Kuronushi had large landholdings in Otsu in the Omni province of Japan.  He was from the influential provincial Ōtomo family that had connections with the Japanese imperial court going back at least to the seventh century.

[2] The thirty-six immortal poets come from Fujiwara no Kinto’s “Anthology of Poems by the Thirty-Six Poets” (Sanjūrokkasen).  The hundred poets are from Fujiwara no Teika’s Ogura Hayakunin Isshu.

[3] Ki no Tsurayuki, from his introduction to the Kokin Wakashu. Fujiwara (1967) p. 17.

[4] Among the six immortal poets recognized in Japan in 905, two have had a large, enduring effect on Japanese literary imagination.  These two are Ono no Komachi and Ariwara no Narihira.  Komachi wrote complex erotic poems.  She is remembered as a beautiful woman who had many love affairs before she became old and ugly.  Narihira was a grandson of the Japanese emperor and also had many love affairs.  He is thought to have been a primary contributor to the Tales of Ise and to have served as a model for the leading man in The Tale of the Genji.  Komachi and Narihira were celebrated as archetypes of the beautiful woman and man in the imperial court of Heian-period Japan (794-1185).  According to a scholarly authority, “Ono no Komachi is even better known today, mainly because of the legends that grew up around her.” Keene (1999) p. 224.

The other four immortals are largely forgotten.  Kisen Hōshi and Fun’ya no Yasuhide were “minor poets who are remembered mainly because Tsurayuki mentioned them {in his introduction to Kokin Wakashu in 905}.”  Id. pp. 224-5.  A third immortal, Sōjō Henjō, was a grandson of the emperor and seems to be remembered mainly for rumors that he had a love affair with Komachi.  Nonetheless, all three of these poets made the early eleventh-century list of thirty-six immortals of poetry.  Only Ōtomo no Kuronushi has the distinction of being on the 905 list of six immortals of poetry, but not on the subsequent list of thirty-six immortals of poetry.

[image] Ōtomo no Kuronushi. One of a set of six hanging scrolls of the six immortals of poetry by Katsushika Hokusai (1750-1849). Japan, Edo period, ca. 1806-8.  In Freer Gallery, F1907.369.

Reference:

Keene, Donald. 1993. Seeds in the heart: Japanese literature from earliest times to the late sixteenth century. New York: Henry Holt & Co.

Fujiwara, Sadaie. 1967. Fujiwara Teika’s Superior poems of our time; a thirteenth-century poetic treatise and sequence. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press.