Fujiwara No Teika - Partial Bibliography

Partial Bibliography

• Shūi gusō　(拾遺愚草) ; Teika's personal anthology which includes over 3500 poems selected by himself. The two poems which offended Retired Emperor Go-Toba so much and caused the rift between Teika and him are preserved here only.
• Meigetsuki (明月記) ("The Record of the Clear Moon"; sometimes called "Diary of the Clear Moon" or possibly "Chronicle of the Bright Moon"; as the second translation suggests, this was a diary Teika kept in classical Chinese between the ages of approximately 18 (in 1180) to just before his death, around 1241; the entries for 1180 and 1181 may have been written when Teika was an old man, but the bulk of the diary covers the 47 years between 1188 and 1235. As its comprehensiveness might suggest, it is an extremely valuable resource for understanding the court and Teika's place in the Imperial court, even despite its incompleteness- available extant versions consist of 56 scrolls (the Reizei family possesses in its family library holographs of 56 and copies of two more), while scholars estimate that the original consisted of over 180 scrolls.) Among its many interesting passages (some quoted previously) about Teika's career and life is a famous passage from the ninth month of 1180 about Teika's indifference to political or military advancement, in which he aristocratically remarked that "Reports of disturbances and punitive expeditions fill one's ears, but I pay them no attention. The red banners and the expeditions against the traitors are no concern of mine." (Here, "red banners" probably refers to the Imperial standard; the last line is possibly a reference to a poem by Po Chu-i in which he tells of how he has been effectively exiled and passes his time playing Go).
• Hyakunin isshu (百人一首) (c. 1235 "Single Poems by One Hundred Poets"; this collection became the foundation of the modern Japanese New Year game karuta.)
• Hyakunin Shūka (百人秀歌) (1229-1236?; an 101 poem anthology arranged at the request of Utsunomiya Yoritsuna to be copied onto 101 strips of paper and pasted onto the walls of his villa; it has 97 poems in common with Hyakunin isshu, suggesting that perhaps it is a misidentified and variant version of the Isshu.)
• Shoji hyakushu (正治百首) (1200; "Hundred-Poem Sequence of the Shoji era")
• Gotoba-in Kumano Gokō Ki (熊野御幸記) (1201; "The Visit of the Cloistered Emperor to Kumano").Portion of Meigetsuki which Teika wrote about a trip to Kumano he took with Go-Toba and Michichika; like his other diary, it is written in classical Chinese, except for the wakas along the way to the shrines there that Go-Toba was so devoted to that this trip was but one of more than thirty. Teika seems not to have enjoyed the trip; his diary often records concern over his health and matters of decorum such as the proper clothes to wear.
• Eiga taigai or Eika no Taigai (詠歌大概) (c. 1216, 1222?; "Essentials of Poetic Composition"). Besides normal advice and criticism of poetry such as pedantic rules on honkadori - poems used as a base in honkadori should always be old poems and from either the Kokinshū, Shūi Wakashū, or the Gosen Wakashū with no more than two and a half lines borrowed from the originals; similarly, borrowed elements were to be moved within the new poem and the new poem should have a different theme), Teika also tellingly recommends certain classic works for aspiring poets to study: the Tales of Ise, Sanjurokkasen (or "Poems of the Thirty-Six Immortals") and the first two portions of The Collected Works of Po Chü-i. Portions of the Eiga taigai have been translated into English
• Kindai shūka (近代秀歌) (c. 1209; "Superior Poems of Our Time"; a collection of poems Teika felt to be excellent models, with a preface dealing with his critical philosophy, sent to Sanetomo to instruct him in how his poems should emulate the great ancient Japanese poets- teaching by example. This sequence was constructed when he was 47, after the death of Shunzei, which depressed Teika, as evidenced by his writing in the Kindai shūka that he had "forgotten the color of the followers of words; the well-springs of inspiration have run dry.")
• Maigetsusho (毎月抄) (c. 1219; "Monthly Notes"; an epistle of corrections of one hundred poems, sent to a student of Teika's. Besides the corrections, it bore a preface which is a major source of information regarding Teika's view on the aesthetics of poetry; Shōtetsu states that it was sent to Minamoto no Sanetomo; Ton'a holds rather that it had been sent to the "Kinugasa Great Inner Minister", or Fujiwara no Ieyoshi.)
• Matsura Monogatari (松浦宮物語) ("The Tale of Matsura"; an experimental novel believed to be written by Teika, though Teika's manuscript claims that he was merely copying it.)

• Teika hachidai sho (定家八代抄) (Anthology of 1811 poems from the first 8 Imperial anthologies.)
• Shuka no daitai (秀歌大体) ("A Basic Canon of Superior Poems")
• Teika Jittai (定家十体) (1207–1213; an anthology of 286 poems, chiefly derived from the Shin Kokinshū; long believed a forgery, but some modern scholars contend that it is a genuine work.)