(ca. 872-946) poet, travel writer, literary theorist
Ki no Tsurayuki was born to a prominent family in Japan. Little is known of his personal life, but Tsurayuki served as a government official and librarian of the Imperial Records Office in the early 10th century. Between 902 and 905, he was asked by the Imperial Court to compile a collection of Japanese poetry, the Kokinshu, or Collection of Old and New Japanese Poems. He was also given the task of writing the Japanese preface to the collection, in which he provided an explanation of how to criticize poetry. Believing that the artistic value of poetry lay in its effect on the emotions, he wrote: “It is poetry which, without effort, moves heaven and earth, stirs the feelings of the invisible gods and spirits, smooths the relations of men and women, and calms the hearts of fierce warriors.”
Tsurayuki was himself a first-rate poet. His collection Tsurayuki Shu appeared first with 700 poems, and in a second version containing 900 poems. Translator William Porter says his poetry is distinguished by “artless simplicity and quiet humor.” In addition, he wrote a travel book, Tosa nikki, or The Tosa Diary, (935), in which he relates the details of a journey that he took from Tosa to Kyoto in 934. The Tosa Diary ranks among the Japanese classics, and is valued as a model for composition in native Japanese style. The Diary introduced a significant development into Japanese literature because Tsurayuki wrote this work, as he had the preface to Kokinshu, in the phonetic kana syllabary, rather than in Chinese characters. The use of phonetic characters was considered “women’s language,” as opposed to the ideographic characters that constituted the “men’s language;” therefore, in the Diary, Tsurayuki writes from the point of view of a woman character and refers to himself in the third person. Altogether, Tsurayuki’s brilliant prose and poetry rank him among the greatest of Japanese writers of the early Heian period (794-1185).
English Versions of Works by Ki no Tsurayuki
Kokinshu: A Collection of Poems Ancient and Modern. Translated by Laurel Rasplica Rodd and Mary Catherine Henkenius. Edited by Mary Catherine Henkenius. Boston: Cheng & Tsui, 1999.
The Tosa Diary. Translated by William N. Porter. Rutland, Vt.: Charles E. Tuttle, 1981.
A Work about Ki no Tsurayuki
Schalow, Paul Gordon and Janet A. Walker, eds. The Woman’s Hand: Gender and Theory in Japanese Women’s Writing. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996, 5,41-71, 78.
