Commentaries and Commentary Modes in Japanese Literary Tradition Based on the Examples of the Classical Poetry Anthologies

Abstract

Classical studies were the mainstream of Far Eastern traditional culture. A survey of the relationship between classics and their commentaries is central for an understanding of the intellectual history of the countries of the Far East, of which Japan is one. Commentaries paid tribute to the canonization of literary monuments but did this without regard for the artistic and intellectual character of the classical text. Commentaries to the classical texts of ancient Japan, in particular, to the first poetic anthology Man’yōshū (“Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves”), are taking shape in the Heian era (9th-12th) as an attempt to restore the Japanese outlook on this poetry written in the 8th century in Japanese, but in Chinese characters. This classical poetry acquired a new form in the 9th century: now it was written in kanji and Japanese syllabary (hiragana). Several types of literary criticism existed: treatises on literary works, commentaries on classical monuments, compilation of anthologies (selection of literary texts for the constitution of complex collections), as well as poetic contests. Commentators mostly concentrated on understanding the meaning of separate words and phrases, but the general meaning of the text remained out of the scope of their attention.