|
(5) Fujiwara no Shunzei [Fujiwara no Toshinari; Shakua]
(b 1114; d 1204). Waka poet, literary theorist and critic, calligrapher. He was born into a branch family of the Fujiwara clan and, like many of his family, became a court official. In 1167, upon his elevation to Senior Third Rank at court, he changed his given name from Akihiro to Toshinari. In 1172, he rose to his highest office, the relatively modest post of chamberlain of the empress dowager’s household, from which he retired owing to illness. He took the tonsure and the Buddhist name Shakua in 1177. Despite his relatively low rank, Shunzei was highly regarded as a literary critic and arbiter of poetry competitions. Shunzei’s deeply felt Buddhism and practice of meditation were reflected in his poetry, which for him was a serious, almost religious vocation. His poetic ideal may be described as yugen (‘mystery and depth’) and sabi (‘loneliness’), which together enabled a poet to express the transience of human experience and of the beauty of nature. In 1183, Emperor GoShirakawa (reg 1155–8) commissioned him to compile the seventh imperial anthology of classical Japanese poetry, the Senzaiwakashu (‘Collection of a thousand years’).
Part of the Fujiwara (ii) family
|
|
There are more than 45,000 articles in The Grove Dictionary of Art.
To access the rest of this article, including the bibliography, subscribe to
www.groveart.com.
To find out more about this subject, click on a related article below and
subscribe to www.groveart.com
|
