Strangers within: Nōin shū and the canonical status of private poetry collections

Abstract

This paper concerns a small problem with broad ramifications. As is evidently true for others at this conference, from work on a single text I have come to identify a larger issue relating to the matter of canon. Specifically, I have been working on Noin Hoshi's mll:5l~Mi shikashu ~*•(i.e., the personal waka ~fij: anthology of the mid-Heian .IJ'~-era monk Noin, born 988, died after 1052-more on him and his work in a while), and the problem that presented itself was one of genre.In trying to understand the reception history ofNoin' s anthology, I came to the conclusion (perhaps obvious in itself?) that canonical genre categories may determine, in large part, our readings of classical texts. Moreover, this is not a new phenomenon but can be traced back to the earliest identifiable readings. To put it another way, classical texts are not free agents which can identify themselves as they wish; in fact, they have always been placed into canonical generic categories in order to be read. This is true of all literary works up to a point-a text or form does not appear sui generis, but even if it did, we as readers would attempt to classify it in order to approach an understanding of it. But in the case of classical works, the problem of assigned identity is compounded by the weight of history; a new reading must overcome tremendous inertia which a contemporary or even a relatively young established work simply does not carry.I will get to Noin shortly, but to begin I would like to identify some of the salient characteristics of what I will term the shikashu identity problem and then look at the approaches used by various U.S. and British scholars in bringing works from this awkward category into English. After these general points I'll consider the specific case ofNoin's anthology and note how the genre trap denied it a perceptive reading from its own time on down until