Fujiwara Sadaie

Fujiwara Sadaie (born 1162, Japan—died Sept. 26, 1241, Kyōto) was one of the greatest poets of his age and Japan’s most influential poetic theorist and critic until modern times.

Fujiwara was the son and poetic heir of the gifted and influential Shunzei (or Toshinari, 1114–1204), compiler of the seventh Imperial anthology of Japanese poetry, Senzaishū (c. 1188; “Collection of a Thousand Years”). Teika hoped not only to consolidate Shunzei’s poetic gains and add to them in his own right but also to raise his family in political importance. He did not advance politically, however, until he was in his 50s.

As a literary figure, Teika was a supremely accomplished and original poet. His ideal of yōen (“ethereal beauty”) was a unique contribution to a poetic tradition that accepted innovation slowly. In his poems of ethereal beauty, Teika employed traditional language in startling new ways, showing that the prescriptive ideal of “old diction, new treatment” inherited from Shunzei might accommodate innovation and experimentation as well as ensure the preservation of the language and styles of the classical past.

Teika’s poems attracted the favourable notice of the young and poetically talented former emperor Go-Toba (1180–1239), who appointed him one of the compilers of the eighth Imperial anthology Shin kokinshū (c. 1205, “New Collection of Ancient and Modern Times”). In 1232 Teika was appointed sole compiler of the ninth anthology, Shin chokusenshū (1235; “New Imperial Collection”), thereby becoming the first person ever to participate in the compilation of two such anthologies.

During his 40s, Teika underwent a profound inner conflict that greatly hindered his creativity and modified his poetic ideals. The chief poetic ideal of his later years was ushin (“conviction of feeling”), an ideal advocating poetry in more direct, simple styles than the technically complex poetry of yōen. Teika’s achievements in these later styles were impressive, but in his late years he was mainly occupied as a critic, editor, and scholar.

The best known of Teika’s treatises and anthologies, regarded as scripture by generations of court poets, are: Eiga taigai (1216; “Essentials of Poetic Composition”); Shūka no daitai (“A Basic Canon of Superior Poems”); Hyakunin isshū (c. 1235 “Single Poems by One Hundred Poets”); Kindai shūka (1209; “Superior Poems of Our Time”); and Maigetsushō (1219; “Monthly Notes”).