The ''Ruijū Karin'' (類聚歌林) was a Japanese ''

waka Waka may refer to: Culture and language * Waka (canoe), a Polynesian word for canoe; especially, canoes of the Māori of New Zealand ** Waka ama, a Polynesian outrigger canoe ** Waka hourua, a Polynesian ocean-going canoe ** Waka taua, a Māori w ...

'' anthology compiled by

Yamanoue no Okura was a Japanese poet, the best known for his poems of children and commoners. He was a member of Japanese missions to Tang China. He was also a contributor to the Man'yōshū and his writing had a strong Chinese influence. Unlike other Japanese po ...

Compilation and date

The ''Ruijū Karin'' was compiled by

. It was likely compiled after Yōrō 5 (721) when Okura become a tutor to the

crown prince A crown prince or hereditary prince is the heir apparent to the throne in a royal or imperial monarchy. The female form of the title is crown princess, which may refer either to an heiress apparent or, especially in earlier times, to the wif ...

(later

Emperor Shōmu was the 45th emperor of Japan, Imperial Household Agency (''Kunaichō'') 聖武天皇 (45)/ref> according to the traditional order of succession. Shōmu's reign spanned the years 724 through 749, during the Nara period. Traditional narrative ...

Title

The work's title has been translated into English as: *''The Grove of Poetry, Arranged by Topic'' *''Forest of Classified Verse'' *''Forest of Classified Verses'' *''The Grove of Poems Classified'' *''Classified Forest of Poetry'' *''Classified Forest of Verse''

Status and apparent contents

The work is now lost. It apparently survived until around the end of the

Heian period The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. It followed the Nara period, beginning when the 50th emperor, Emperor Kanmu, moved the capital of Japan to Heian-kyō (modern Kyoto). means "peace" in Japanese. ...

. The late-Heian books of poetic criticism ' and ' record that copies of it were in the holdings of

Byōdō-in is a Buddhist temple in the city of Uji in Kyoto Prefecture, Japan, built in the late Heian period. It is jointly a temple of the Jōdo-shū (Pure Land) and Tendai-shū sects. History This temple was originally built in 998 in the He ...

and/or

Hōjō-ji was a Buddhist temple in Kyoto which was, for a time, one of the highest temples in Japanese Buddhism. The temple was built around the year 1017, by Fujiwara no Michinaga. The dedication of its Golden Hall in 1022 is detailed in the historical epi ...

), and in addition to these works it was also mentioned in a diary entry from 1015 (永承五年四月二十六日前麗景殿女御延子歌絵合, 正子内親王絵合), '' Ōgishō'' (奥義抄),

Fujiwara no Shunzei was a Japanese poet, courtier, and Buddhist monk of the late Heian period. He was also known as Fujiwara no Toshinari"...there is the further problem, the rendition of the name in romanized form. Teika probably referred to himself as Sadaie, and ...

's ', '' Waka Genzaisho Mokuroku'' (和歌現在書目録), ', but none of these works quote it directly. Its contents are now known only from nine fragmentary passages quoted in books I, II and IX the ''

Man'yōshū The is the oldest extant collection of Japanese (poetry in Classical Japanese), compiled sometime after AD 759 during the Nara period. The anthology is one of the most revered of Japan's poetic compilations. The compiler, or the last in ...

'', as a source of information poets and the circumstances of composition of poems, and its full contents are unknown. The number of books which comprised the anthology is unknown, although the

Shōsōin The is the treasure house of Tōdai-ji Temple in Nara, Japan. The building is in the ''azekura'' ( log-cabin) style with a raised floor. It lies to the northwest of the Great Buddha Hall. The Shōsō-in houses artifacts connected to Emperor Shō ...

supposedly included a ''Karin Nanakan'' (歌林七巻) copied by which, if it was the same as this work, would mean it consisted of seven books. The work divided poems into categories based on some sort of criteria and, using resources such as the '' Nihon Shoki'' and ''

Fudoki are ancient reports on provincial culture, geography, and oral tradition presented to the reigning monarchs of Japan, also known as local gazetteers. They contain agricultural, geographical, and historical records as well as mythology and ...

'', investigated the circumstances under which its poems were composed. As far as the ''Man'yōshū'' tells us, it apparently included poems by

emperors An emperor (from la, imperator, via fro, empereor) is a monarch, and usually the sovereignty, sovereign ruler of an empire or another type of imperial realm. Empress, the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife (empress consort), ...

and members of the imperial family, as well as court poems such as those commemorating imperial processions to various parts of the country (行幸従駕 ''gyōkō-jūga''). This has led to the theory that it was compiled to be presented to the crown prince. It may have been modeled on the Chinese work ''

Yiwen Leiju The ''Yiwen Leiju'' is a Chinese ''leishu'' encyclopedia completed by Ouyang Xun in 624 under the Tang dynasty, Tang. Its other contributors included Linghu Defen and Chen Shuda. It is divided into 47 sections and many subsections. It covers a ...

''.

References

Citations

Works cited

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Ruijuu Karin Nara-period works Lost literature Shisenshū Yamanoue no Okura