Saigyo
Saigyō Hōshi (Japanese: 西行法師) (1118 - 1190) was a famous Japanese poet of the late Heian and early Kamakura period.
Biography
Born Satō Norikiyo (佐藤義清) in Kyoto to a noble family, he lived during the traumatic transition of power between the old court nobles and the new samurai warriors. After the start of the Age of Mappō (1052), Buddhism 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 or sabishisa in his poetry. As a youth, he worked as a guard to retired Emperor Toba, but in 1140 at age 22, for reasons now unknown, he quit worldly life to become a monk. He later took the pen name, "Saigyō" meaning Western Journey, a reference to Amida Buddha 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 to he took to Northern Honshū that would later inspire Basho in his Narrow Road to the Deep Interior. Some main collections of Saigyō's work are in the Sankashu, Shinkokinshu, and Shikashu. He died in Hirokawa Temple, Kawachi, Osaka, at age 72.
Style
In Saigyō's time, the Man'yōshū was no longer a big influence on waka poetry, compared to the Kokinshu. Where the Kokinshū was concerned with subjective experience, word play, flow, and elegant diction (neither colloquial nor pseudo-Chinese), the Shinkokinshu (formed with poetry written by Saigyo 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, is slightly more colloquial, and is much, much more somber and melancholic. Due to the turbulent times, Saigyō focuses not just on awaré (sorrow from change) but also on sabi (loneliness) and kanashi (sadness). Though he is a Buddhist monk, Saigyō was still very attached to the world and the beauty of nature.
Resources
- Saigyô, Poems of a Mountain Home, translated by Burton Watson, Columbia Univsity Press, © 1991 ISBN 0-231-07492-1 cloth ISBN 0-231-07493-X pbk [233 pp.]
- Saigyô,Mirror for the Moon: A Selection of Poems by Saigyô (1118-1190), translated by William R. LaFleur, New Directions 1978
External links
- Classical Japanese Database - has some poems by Saigyō in translations and in the original Japanese
ja:西行 pl:Saigyo
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