was a

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

of the late

Heian The Japanese word Heian (平安, lit. "peace") may refer to: * Heian period, an era of Japanese history * Heian-kyō, the Heian-period capital of Japan that has become the present-day city of Kyoto * Heian series, a group of karate kata (forms) * ...

and early

Kamakura period The is a period of History of Japan, Japanese history that marks the governance by the Kamakura shogunate, officially established in 1192 in Kamakura, Kanagawa, Kamakura by the first ''shōgun'' Minamoto no Yoritomo after the conclusion of the G ...

Biography

Born in

Kyoto Kyoto ( or ; Japanese language, Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan's largest and most populous island of Honshu. , the city had a population of 1.46 million, making it t ...

to a noble family, he lived during the traumatic transition of power between the old court nobles and the new

samurai The samurai () were members of the warrior class in Japan. They were originally provincial warriors who came from wealthy landowning families who could afford to train their men to be mounted archers. In the 8th century AD, the imperial court d ...

warriors. After the start of the age of

Mappō The Decline of the Dharma or Ages of the Dharma, refers to traditional Buddhist accounts of how the Buddhism, Buddhist religion and the Buddha's teaching (Dharma) is believed to decline throughout history. It constitutes a key aspect of Buddhist ...

Buddhism Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...

was considered to be in decline and no longer as effective a means of salvation. These cultural shifts during his lifetime led to a sense of melancholy in his poetry. As a youth, he worked as a guard to retired

Emperor Toba was the 74th Emperor of Japan,Imperial Household Agency (''Kunaichō'') 鳥羽天皇 (74)/ref> according to the traditional order of succession. Toba's reign spanned the years from 1107 through 1123. Genealogy Before his ascension to the Ch ...

, but in 1140 at age 22, for reasons now unknown, he quit worldly life to become a monk, taking the

religious name A religious name is a type of given name bestowed for religious purposes, and which is generally used in such contexts. Christianity Catholic Church Baptismal name In baptism, Catholic Church, Catholics are given a Christian name, which should n ...

. He later took the pen name , meaning "Western Journey", a reference to

Amida Buddha Amida can mean : Places and jurisdictions * Amida (Mesopotamia), now Diyarbakır, an ancient city in Asian Turkey; it is (nominal) seat of: ** The Chaldean Catholic Archeparchy of Amida ** The Latin titular Metropolitan see of Amida of the Roma ...

and the Western paradise. He lived alone for long periods in his life in Saga, Mt. Koya, Mt. Yoshino, Ise, and many other places, but he is more known for the many long, poetic journeys he took to Northern

Honshū , historically known as , is the largest of the four main islands of Japan. It lies between the Pacific Ocean (east) and the Sea of Japan (west). It is the seventh-largest island in the world, and the second-most populous after the Indonesian ...

that would later inspire Bashō in his '' Narrow Road to the Interior''. He was a good friend of

Fujiwara no Teika was a Japanese anthologist, calligrapher, literary critic,"The high quality of poetic theory (''karon'') in this age depends chiefly upon the poetic writings of Fujiwara Shunzei and his son Teika. The other theorists of ''tanka'' writing, st ...

. is Saigyō's personal poetry collection. Other collections that include poems by Saigyō are the ''

Shin Kokin Wakashū The , also known in abbreviated form as the or even conversationally as the Shin Kokin, is the eighth imperial anthology of waka poetry compiled by the Japanese court, beginning with the '' Kokin Wakashū'' circa 905 and ending with the '' Shin ...

'' and the '' Shika Wakashū''. He died at Hirokawa Temple in

Kawachi Province was a Provinces of Japan, province of Japan in the eastern part of modern Osaka Prefecture. It originally held the southwestern area that was split off into Izumi Province. It was also known as . Geography The area was radically different in th ...

(present-day

Osaka Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of Honshu. Osaka Prefecture has a population of 8,778,035 () and has a geographic area of . Osaka Prefecture borders Hyōgo Prefecture to the northwest, Kyoto Prefecture to the north, Nara ...

) at age 72.

Style

In Saigyō's time, 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 ...

'' was no longer a big influence on waka poetry, compared to the ''

Kokin Wakashū The , commonly abbreviated as , is an early anthology of the '' waka'' form of Japanese poetry, dating from the Heian period. An imperial anthology, it was conceived by Emperor Uda () and published by order of his son Emperor Daigo () in abou ...

''. Where the ''Kokin Wakashū'' was concerned with subjective experience, word play, flow, and elegant diction (neither colloquial nor pseudo-Chinese), the ''

'' (formed with poetry written by Saigyō and others writing in the same style) was less subjective, had fewer verbs and more nouns, was not as interested in word play, allowed for repetition, had breaks in the flow, was slightly more colloquial and more somber and melancholic. Due to the turbulent times, Saigyō focuses not just on ''

mono no aware , , and also translated as , or , is a Japanese idiom for the awareness of , or transience of things, and both a transient gentle sadness (or wistfulness) at their passing as well as a longer, deeper gentle sadness about this state being the re ...

'' (sorrow from change) but also on '' sabi'' (loneliness) and ''kanashi'' (sadness). Though he was a Buddhist monk, Saigyō was still very attached to the world and the beauty of nature.

Poetry examples

Many of his best-known poems express the tension he felt between renunciatory Buddhist ideals and his love of natural beauty. Most monks would have asked to die facing West, to be welcomed by the Buddha, but Saigyō finds the Buddha in the flowers: To be "heartless" was an ideal of Buddhist monkhood, meaning one had abandoned all desire and attachment: Saigyō travelled extensively, but one of his favorite places was

Mount Yoshino is the general name for the mountain ridge that stretches from the south bank of the Yoshino River in the town of Yoshino central Nara Prefecture, Japan, to the Ōmine Mountains, stretching for about eight kilometers from north-to-south, or the ...

, famous for its cherry blossoms:

Legacy

* Saigyō's journeys were an inspiration for the court lady

Lady Nijō (1258 – after 1307) was a Japanese noblewoman, poet and author. She was a concubine of Emperor Go-Fukakusa from 1271 to 1283, and later became a Buddhist nun. After years of travelling, around 1304–07 she wrote a memoir, ''Towazugatari'' ("A ...

, who records in her ''Towazugatari'' that she dreamed of writing a similar travel book after reading Saigyō's work at age 8. Nijō later followed in Saigyō's footsteps when she became a

Buddhist Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...

nun, visiting many of the places he recorded. * Bashō subsequently looked back to Saigyō for artistic inspiration. For example, quoting Saigyō's poem on the pine tree at Shiogoshi, he wrote "Should anyone dare to write another poem on this pine tree, it would be like trying to add a sixth finger to his hand".Nobuyuki Yuasa trans., ''The Narrow Road to the Deep North'' (Penguin 1983) p. 138

In popular culture

* 2016: '' The Great Passage'', anime, episode 7

Resources

* Meredith McKinney. ''Gazing at the Moon: Buddhist Poems of Solitude'', Shambhala Publications, 2021 . * Saigyô'', Poems of a Mountain Home'', translated by

Burton Watson Burton Dewitt Watson (June 13, 1925April 1, 2017) was an American sinologist, translator, and writer known for his English translations of Chinese and Japanese literature. Watson's translations received many awards, including the Gold Medal Aw ...

, Columbia University Press, 1991 cloth pbk 33 pp.* Saigyô, ''Mirror for the Moon: A Selection of Poems by Saigyô (1118-1190)'', translated by William R. LaFleur, New Directions 1978. * William R. LaFleur. ''Awesome Nightfall: The Life, Times, and Poetry of Saigyō.'' Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003 pbk

77 pp 77 may refer to: * 77 (number) * one of the years 77 BC, AD 77, 1977, 2077 * 77 Frigga, a main-belt asteroid * Book 77, the Rights of Man * Tatra 77, a sedan Music * 77 (band), a Spanish hard rock band * ''77'', an album by Matt Kennon Matthe ...

This is an expanded and matured reworking of the material in ''Mirror for the Moon''.

References

External links

Classical Japanese Database
- has some poems by Saigyō in translations and in the original Japanese

in Japanese
digital 西行庵

山家集の研究
{{DEFAULTSORT:Saigyo 1118 births 1190 deaths 12th-century Japanese poets Buddhist poets Hyakunin Isshu poets Buddhist clergy of the Heian period Buddhist clergy of the Kamakura period Shingon Buddhist monks