Nishiyama Sōin

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Nishiyama Soin Nishiyama Soin.jpg
Nishiyama Sōin

Nishiyama Sōin(西山 宗因, born Nishiyama Toyoichi (西山 豊一) March 28, 1605 in Higo Province, Japan May 5, 1682 in Kyoto) was a haikai-no-renga poet of the early Tokugawa period. He founded the Danrin school of haikai poetry, which aimed to move away from the serious 'bookishness' popular in Japanese poetry at the time and become more in touch with the common people, infusing a spirit of greater freedom into their poetry.

Higo Province province of Japan

Higo Province was an old province of Japan in the area that is today Kumamoto Prefecture on the island of Kyūshū. It was sometimes called Hishū (肥州), with Hizen Province. Higo bordered on Chikugo, Bungo, Hyūga, Ōsumi, and Satsuma Provinces.

Kyoto Designated city in Kansai, Japan

Kyoto, officially Kyoto City, is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture, located in the Kansai region of Japan. It is best known in Japanese history for being the former Imperial capital of Japan for more than one thousand years, as well as a major part of the Kyoto-Osaka-Kobe metropolitan area.

Renku, or haikai no renga, is a Japanese form of popular collaborative linked verse poetry. It is a development of the older Japanese poetic tradition of ushin renga, or orthodox collaborative linked verse. At renku gatherings participating poets take turns providing alternating verses of 17 and 14 morae. Initially haikai no renga distinguished itself through vulgarity and coarseness of wit, before growing into a legitimate artistic tradition, and eventually giving birth to the haiku form of Japanese poetry. The term renku gained currency after 1904, when Kyoshi Takahama started to use it.

Sōin's haikai (comical renga) became the transition between the light and clever haikai of Matsunaga Teitoku and the more serious and aesthetic renku of Matsuo Bashō.

Renga is a genre of Japanese collaborative poetry—poetry written by more than one author working together. A renga consists of at least two ku (句) or stanzas. The opening stanza of the renga, called the hokku (発句), became the basis for the modern haiku form of poetry.

Matsuo Bashō Japanese poet

Matsuo Bashō, born 松尾 金作, then Matsuo Chūemon Munefusa, was the most famous poet of the Edo period in Japan. During his lifetime, Bashō was recognized for his works in the collaborative haikai no renga form; today, after centuries of commentary, he is recognized as the greatest master of haiku. Matsuo Bashō's poetry is internationally renowned; and, in Japan, many of his poems are reproduced on monuments and traditional sites. Although Bashō is justifiably famous in the West for his hokku, he himself believed his best work lay in leading and participating in renku. He is quoted as saying, "Many of my followers can write hokku as well as I can. Where I show who I really am is in linking haikai verses."

Wikisource Wikimedia project, an online digital library of free content textual sources on a wiki

Wikisource is an online digital library of free content textual sources on a wiki, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikisource is the name of the project as a whole and the name for each instance of that project ; multiple Wikisources make up the overall project of Wikisource. The project's aims are to host all forms of free text, in many languages, and translations. Originally conceived as an archive to store useful or important historical texts, it has expanded to become a general-content library. The project officially began in November 24, 2003 under the name Project Sourceberg, a play on the famous Project Gutenberg. The name Wikisource was adopted later that year and it received its own domain name seven months later.

Related Research Articles

Haiku (俳句) listen  is a very short form of Japanese poetry in three phrases, typically characterized by three qualities:

  1. The essence of haiku is "cutting" (kiru). This is often represented by the juxtaposition of two images or ideas and a kireji between them, a kind of verbal punctuation mark which signals the moment of separation and colours the manner in which the juxtaposed elements are related.
  2. Traditional haiku often consist of 17 on, in three phrases of 5, 7, and 5 on, respectively.
  3. A kigo, usually drawn from a saijiki, an extensive but defined list of such terms.
Ihara Saikaku Japanese writer

Ihara Saikaku was a Japanese poet and creator of the "floating world" genre of Japanese prose (ukiyo-zōshi).

Japanese poetry literary tradition of Japan

Japanese poetry is poetry of or typical of Japan, or written, spoken, or chanted in the Japanese language, which includes Old Japanese, Early Middle Japanese, Late Middle Japanese, and Modern Japanese, and some poetry in Japan which was written in the Chinese language or ryūka from the Okinawa Islands: it is possible to make a more accurate distinction between Japanese poetry written in Japan or by Japanese people in other languages versus that written in the Japanese language by speaking of Japanese-language poetry. Much of the literary record of Japanese poetry begins when Japanese poets encountered Chinese poetry during the Tang dynasty. Under the influence of the Chinese poets of this era Japanese began to compose poetry in Chinese kanshi); and, as part of this tradition, poetry in Japan tended to be intimately associated with pictorial painting, partly because of the influence of Chinese arts, and the tradition of the use of ink and brush for both writing and drawing. It took several hundred years to digest the foreign impact and make it an integral part of Japanese culture and to merge this kanshi poetry into a Japanese language literary tradition, and then later to develop the diversity of unique poetic forms of native poetry, such as waka, haikai, and other more Japanese poetic specialties. For example, in the Tale of Genji both kanshi and waka are frequently mentioned. The history of Japanese poetry goes from an early semi-historical/mythological phase, through the early Old Japanese literature inclusions, just before the Nara period, the Nara period itself, the Heian period, the Kamakura period, and so on, up through the poetically important Edo period and modern times; however, the history of poetry often is different from socio-political history.

Hokku is the opening stanza of a Japanese orthodox collaborative linked poem, renga, or of its later derivative, renku. From the time of Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694), the hokku began to appear as an independent poem, and was also incorporated in haibun. In the late 19th century, Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902), renamed the stand-alone hokku to haiku, and the latter term is now generally applied retrospectively to all hokku appearing independently of renku or renga, irrespective of when they were written. The term hokku continues to be used in its original sense, as the opening verse of a linked poem.

Haikai may refer in both Japanese and English to haikai no renga (renku), a popular genre of Japanese linked verse, which developed in the sixteenth century out of the earlier aristocratic renga. It meant "vulgar" or "earthy", and often derived its effect from satire and puns, though "under the influence of [Matsuo] Bashō (1644–1694) the tone of haikai no renga became more serious". "Haikai" may also refer to other poetic forms that embrace the haikai aesthetic, including haiku and senryū, haiga, and haibun. However, haikai does not include orthodox renga or waka.

The Danrin school (談林派) is a school of haikai poetry founded by the poet Nishiyama Sōin. The name literally means 'talkative forest'. It aimed to move away from the serious 'bookishness' popular in Japanese poetry at the time and to become more in touch with the common people, therefore infusing a greater spirit of freedom into their poetry. The Danrin school favored the usage of plain language, everyday subjects, and the use of humor. Its members explored people's daily life for sources of playfulness, though they were often accused of ending up with mere frivolity. The renowned poet Matsuo Bashō was once a member of the Danrin school, though he later broke away from it.

Yamazaki Sōkan (山崎宗鑑) (1465–1553) was a renga and haikai poet from Ōmi Province, Japan. His real name was Shina Norishige, and he was also called Yasaburō; "Yamazaki Sōkan" was a pen-name (haimyō).

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.

Nationality words link to articles concerning that nation's poetry or literature.

Soin may refer to:

Nishiyama may refer to:

<i>Waka</i> (poetry) type of poetry in classical Japanese literature.

Waka is a type of poetry in classical Japanese literature. Waka are composed in Japanese, and are contrasted with poetry composed by Japanese poets in Classical Chinese, which are known as kanshi. Although waka in modern Japanese is written as 和歌, in the past it was also written as 倭歌, and a variant name is yamato-uta (大和歌).

Masashi Nishiyama is a Japanese judoka who won a bronze medal at the 2012 Summer Olympics. He is competing for the Nippon Steel Corporation Judo Club.

Ogi no Shiori (荻のしをり) is a Japanese dictionary of words for use in renga. It is also known as Shirin Man'yō Ryōzai (詞林万葉良材), Shiori Ogi (しをり荻) and Shirin Kōmoku (詞林綱目). It was compiled by Nakahori Kian by around 1692, when he wrote the preface, and first entered print in 1718. It contains a total of around 3,500 entries, and was well-received due to its ease of use and comprehensiveness.