Saigyō


Saigyō Hōshi was a Japanese poet of the late Heian and early Kamakura period.

Biography

Born Satō Norikiyo in Kyoto to a noble family, he lived during the traumatic transition of power between the old court nobles and the new samurai warriors. After the start of the age of Mappō, Buddhism was considered to be in decline and no longer as effective a means of salvation. These cultural shifts during his lifetime led to a sense of melancholy in his poetry. As a youth, he worked as a guard to retired Emperor Toba, but in 1140 at age 22, for reasons now unknown, he quit worldly life to become a monk, taking the religious name En'i.
He later took the pen name Saigyō, meaning "Western Journey", a reference to Amida Buddha and the Western paradise. He lived alone for long periods in his life in Saga, Mt. Koya, Mt. Yoshino, Ise, and many other places, but he is more known for the many long, poetic journeys he took to Northern Honshū that would later inspire Bashō in his Narrow Road to the Interior.
He was a good friend of Fujiwara no Teika.
Sankashū is Saigyō's personal poetry collection. Other collections that include poems by Saigyō are the Shin Kokin Wakashū and the Shika Wakashū.
He died at Hirokawa Temple in Kawachi Province at age 72.

Style

In Saigyō's time, the Man'yōshū was no longer a big influence on waka poetry, compared to the Kokin Wakashū. Where the Kokin Wakashū was concerned with subjective experience, word play, flow, and elegant diction, the Shin Kokin Wakashū was less subjective, had fewer verbs and more nouns, was not as interested in word play, allowed for repetition, had breaks in the flow, was slightly more colloquial and more somber and melancholic. Due to the turbulent times, Saigyō focuses not just on mono no aware but also on sabi and kanashi. Though he was a Buddhist monk, Saigyō was still very attached to the world and the beauty of nature.

Poetry examples

Many of his best-known poems express the tension he felt between renunciatory Buddhist ideals and his love of natural beauty. Most monks would have asked to die facing West, to be welcomed by the Buddha, but Saigyō finds the Buddha in the flowers:
To be "heartless" was an ideal of Buddhist monkhood, meaning one had abandoned all desire and attachment:
Saigyō travelled extensively, but one of his favorite places was Mount Yoshino, famous for its cherry blossoms:

Legacy

  • Saigyō's journeys were an inspiration for the court lady Lady Nijō, who records in her Towazugatari that she dreamed of writing a similar travel book after reading Saigyō's work at age 8. Nijō later followed in Saigyō's footsteps when she became a Buddhist nun, visiting many of the places he recorded.
  • Bashō subsequently looked back to Saigyō for artistic inspiration. For example, quoting Saigyō's poem on the pine tree at Shiogoshi, he wrote "Should anyone dare to write another poem on this pine tree, it would be like trying to add a sixth finger to his hand".

    In popular culture

  • 2003: Though her precise relation to Saigyō is unclear, Touhou Project's Saigyōji Yuyuko is certainly inspired by Saigyō; aside from sharing a name, Yuyuko is a ghost sealed to the Saigyō Ayakashi, a youkai cherry tree that was born when a "divinely talented poet" who loved nature chose to die under its blossoms. This is a direct reference to Saigyō's own stated preferences: "Offer up cherry blossoms to the honored dead, those that might mourn my death."
  • 2016: The Great Passage, anime, episode 7

    Resources

  • Meredith McKinney. Gazing at the Moon: Buddhist Poems of Solitude, Shambhala Publications, 2021.
  • Saigyô, Poems of a Mountain Home, translated by Burton Watson, Columbia University Press, 1991 cloth pbk
  • Saigyô, Mirror for the Moon: A Selection of Poems by Saigyô , translated by William R. LaFleur, New Directions 1978.
  • William R. LaFleur. Awesome Nightfall: The Life, Times, and Poetry of Saigyō. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003 pbk This is an expanded and matured reworking of the material in Mirror for the Moon.