Saigyo: Poetry, Travel, and Life
Writer Profile
Yukitada Terazawa
Professor EmeritusYukitada Terazawa
Professor Emeritus
Today, I am sometimes surprised to see how many people are interested in Saigyo.
The modern era is a chaotic time where it is difficult to know what to believe, and perhaps that is why people are drawn to Saigyo, seeing in him something that touches upon the essence of how a human should live, even if it cannot be clearly expressed.
Saigyo, along with Teika, is a representative poet of the Shin-Kokin period. In the "Shin-Kokin Wakashu," 94 of Saigyo's poems were selected—the highest number in the collection—far exceeding those of professional poets, despite Saigyo not being one himself.
Saigyo's readership is truly broad. Works about Saigyo have been written by a wide variety of people, from specialists to general readers. Saigyo is a historical giant who can no longer be confined within the interests of Japanese literature specialists and related fields.
The reason Saigyo came to be widely loved by the nation is that, along with his reputation as a poet, his very way of life had something that strongly attracted people.
In an era when travel was dangerous and people did not travel unless there were unavoidable circumstances, he seems to have discovered early on the charm of traveling—leaving daily life behind to let one's mind wander in unknown worlds. Through his travels and daily life, he conveyed the beauty of cherry blossoms to people through numerous famous poems.
During a turbulent era of transition from an aristocratic society to a warrior society, he encouraged an awareness of the impermanence of life and powerfully demonstrated that there is a way to overcome it. Furthermore, Saigyo played an extremely significant role in the coexistence of Buddhism and Shinto.
As Tokue Mezaki points out, Saigyo established a prototype of the free person in our country. The resilience of spirit that allowed him to so thoroughly carry out his own way of life during such a turbulent period is unparalleled, not only before his time but up to the present day.
The fact that a person who abandoned the world and gave up or renounced normal social life had such a massive influence on his contemporaries and future generations can be called a kind of historical paradox. He is a rare existence not only in the history of waka poetry but also in the history of thought and culture.
*Affiliations and titles are those at the time of publication.