THE TAIRA POETS
A lecture by Dr. Anne Commons (University of Alberta)
5:00 pm on February 16 (Thursday)
Asian Centre, room 604
Readers of the Heike monogatari will be familiar with the dramatic episode in which Taira no Tadanori delays his departure from the capital as the Minamoto forces approach to deliver his personal poetry collection to the poet Fujiwara no Shunzei in the hope that it will—unlike Tadanori himself—survive the war. This episode can be taken as one of the many in the Heike monogatari through which the Taira are depicted to an exaggerated degree as courtly and aristocratic rather than martial. However, the Heike monogatari scenes that depict prominent Taira composing poetry do reflect the activities of men such as Taira no Tsunemori, Tadanori, and Tsunemasa, who formed the core of the Taira poetry circle (Heike kadan), a poetic group that rivalled the regent’s poetry circle for influence in the 1170s and early 1180s. Although the Taira’s contribution to the cultural life of the capital seems to have often been overlooked, the Taira poets occupy a position of considerable significance due to their prominent role in poetic circles during the turbulent late twelfth century, a time when not only the content but also the practice of poetry were assuming forms that would come to be regarded as characteristically medieval. In this paper I shall examine the role and significance of the Ise Taira poets in the cultural spheres of their time, in terms of both their poetic style and their mode of poetic practice, particularly their organisation into a family-based poetic association.