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26-424: The Tosa Nikki ( 土佐日記 , Tosa Diary ) is a poetic diary written anonymously by the tenth-century Japanese poet Ki no Tsurayuki . The text details a 55-day journey in 935 returning to Kyoto from Tosa province , where Tsurayuki had been the provincial governor. The prose account of the journey is punctuated by Japanese poems , purported to have been composed on the spot by the characters. The Tosa Nikki

52-425: A child and a grieving parent are frequently mentioned by the narrator and the many that accompany the journey. For example, on the 27th of the 12th month, it referenced "a parent [who] was lost in grief for an absent child" with the poem accompanying the day also written about "one among us who will not be going home". This suggests that the child had passed recently or during the journey. Another example can be found on

78-399: A merge between fictional and autobiographical genres. By incorporating fictional elements with real scenery in both narration and poems, Tosa Nikki allows allusions to previous works and conveys different images and significance to those already popular locations. Below are the dates and locations the narrator travelled to. The dates are written according to the lunar calendar. The loss of

104-462: A poetic tradition, "it seems clear that poetry is conceived of as the most basic or purest literary form and that its presence, almost alone, is enough to change a journal of one’s life into an art diary." Monogatari , or the Japanese narrative literature, and nikki bungaku greatly influenced each other. In fact, with some works having multiple names— Ise Monogatari or Zaigo Chūjō no Nikki and

130-602: A series of poems held together by prose sections, the poetic diary has often taken the form of a pillow book or a travel journal . Since World War II , Beat Generation writers in the United States such as Gary Snyder , Jack Kerouac , Philip Whalen , and Joanne Kyger , as well as post-beat writers such as Andrew Schelling and Michael Rothenberg have studied and written in Western-style poetic diary form. Although scholars have found diaries dating back to

156-789: A study group at the Jōdo Shinshū Buddhist Church in Berkeley. Ultimately, Zen became his chosen path. Whalen spent 1966 and 1967 in Kyoto, Japan , assisted by a grant from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a job teaching English. There, he practiced zazen daily, and wrote some forty poems and a second novel. He moved into the San Francisco Zen Center and became a student of Zentatsu Richard Baker in 1972. The following year, he became

182-409: A tradition of psychological exploration and self-expression through Japanese vernacular, nikki bungaku not only gives modern readers an idea of historical events but also a view into the lives and minds of their authors. Literary diaries are also believed to have influenced Murasaki Shikibu 's classic Genji Monogatari , arguably the first and one of the greatest court novels of all time. Lastly, though

208-784: Is called "Ben Fagan". Whalen's poetry was featured in Donald Allen 's anthology The New American Poetry 1945-1960 . Whalen's first interest in Eastern religions centered on Vedanta . Upon release from the army in 1946, he visited the Vedanta Society in Portland, but did not pursue this very far, because of the expense of attending their countryside ashram. Tibetan Buddhism also attracted him, but he found it "unnecessarily complicated." In 1952, Gary Snyder lent him books on Zen by D. T. Suzuki . With Snyder, Whalen attended

234-426: Is often attributed to Michitsuna's mother and her Kagerō Nikki . In this three part diary, she details the 21-year period between her courtship with Fujiwara no Kaneie and the beginning of her son's courtship. Expressing her personal feelings and exploring her marriage and social situation, Mother of Michitsuna pioneered a new wave of courtier women's kana literature. Other exemplars of Heian nikki bungaku include

260-532: Is the first notable example of the Japanese diary as literature. Until its time, the word "diary" ( nikki ) denoted dry official records of government or family affairs, written by men in Sino-Japanese . By contrast, the Tosa Diary is written in the Japanese language, using phonetic kana characters. Literate men of the period wrote in both kana and kanji , but women typically were not taught

286-469: The Heichū Monogatari or Heichū Nikki —the line between the two genres was not always clear. In writing her Kagerō Nikki , Mother of Michitsuna starts with her motive of realism in contrast to the monogatari she has read. Despite the overt rejection of the monogatari form, one can see the influence of the genre on diary literature in terms of style and paradigm; the discontent of the authors of both

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312-490: The Sarashina Nikki and Kagero Nikki seems to stem from the gap between their realities and life as idealized in monogatari. Lastly, perhaps the most famous of all monogatari, Genji Monogatari , delves into psychological aspects of its characters' private lives much like that of nikki bungaku. Mother of Michitsuna's Kagerō Nikki ushered in the second period of Heian literature and women's kana prose. Starting

338-496: The Izumi Shikibu Nikki attributed to Izumi Shikibu, Murasaki Shikibu’s Murasaki Shikibu Nikki , Sugawara no Takasue no Musume’s Sarashina Nikki , and Fujiwara no Nagako ’s Sanuki no Suke no Nikki . Although there remains debate as to whether the nikki bungaku genre, with its emphasis on the diary as a literary art, continues to modern times, prominent examples of diary literature abound. The medieval period saw

364-724: The US Army Air Forces during World War II . He attended Reed College on the GI Bill . There, he met Gary Snyder and Lew Welch , and graduated with a BA in 1951. He read at the famous Six Gallery reading in 1955 that marked the launch of the West Coast Beats into the public eye. He appears, in barely fictionalized form, as the character "Warren Coughlin" in Jack Kerouac 's The Dharma Bums , which includes an account of that reading. In Big Sur he

390-449: The 5th day of the 2nd month, as the grieving mother composes her own poem and expresses her pain and unwillingness to forget about her child. An interpretation can be that the child is still among the group spiritually, and the mother's grief is the emotional attachment keeping the child from moving on. It is speculated that Ki no Tsurayuki has lost a child during this time, and alluded to his and his family's grief through various characters

416-681: The Japanese travel journal, which—as a literary genre—is considered inseparable from poetry. These follow the tradition of weaving of poems and the use of introductory narratives written in a logical structure. Like other poems in the genre, the Tosa Nikki also explored the significance of landscape as well poems written about it. Even the Tosa Nikki was also alluded to by other poems such as the maeku . The Tosa Nikki also implements fictional names of places to call on earlier and traditional Japanese texts. The usage of fictional names also allows

442-448: The daily entry as a formal device, and a stylistic heightening." For example, Tsurayuki's Tosa Nikki contains fifty-seven waka. Revealing that the "events of the months and years gone by are only vague in memory, and often I have just written what I recall," Mother of Michitsuna also reveals that nikki are not limited to a daily log of events. On the third point, one can see a literary intent when comparing Bashō's Oku no Hosomichi with

468-763: The definition is disputable, one can argue that the Japanese literary diary tradition continues to the present and remains an important element of culture and personal expression. Philip Whalen Philip Glenn Whalen (October 20, 1923 – June 26, 2002) was an American poet, Zen Buddhist , and a key figure in the San Francisco Renaissance and close to the Beat generation . Born in Portland, Oregon , Whalen grew up in The Dalles from age four until he returned to Portland in 1941. He served in

494-476: The eighth century, most of those were mere records kept on daily matters of state. At that time, Japan looked to China as a model of culture and civilization and sought to copy Chinese official government diaries. Thus, early Japanese diaries were factual, written in Chinese characters , and influenced by official, male perspectives. Ki no Tsurayuki (c. 872 – 945), a famed poet and author, is credited with writing

520-531: The first literary diary. His Tosa Nikki , written in 935, records his journey from Tosa in Shikoku to Kyoto through the alleged perspective of a female companion. Departing from the tradition of diaries written in Chinese, Tsurayuki used vernacular Japanese characters , waka poetry, and a female narrator to convey the emotional aspects of the journey. The catalyst of the nikki bungaku tradition, however,

546-501: The latter, being restricted to kana literature. By framing the diary in the point of view of a fictitious female narrator, Tsurayuki could avoid employing Chinese characters or citing Chinese poems, focusing instead on the aesthetics of the Japanese language and its poetry. The Tosa Nikki is associated with travel poems ( kiryoka ) (such as those compiled in the Man'yōshū ) as well as the utamakura and utanikki . These texts constitute

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572-644: The life of the aristocracy. Due to the importance of waka in communication, imperial waka anthologies such as the Kokinshū were compiled as poetic standards. Nikki bungaku grew out of waka's rise in popularity. It has even been speculated that the Kagerō Nikki grew out of a request to compile a family poetry collection. Literary diaries from Heian and Muromachi periods included waka, and subsequent diaries were often associated with poetic forms such as haikai , haiku , and free verse. More than just developing from

598-474: The log kept by his travel companion, Iwanami Sora . Other common observations include that diaries attempt at an "expression of the self" as opposed to a "search for the self." For example, in writing her Kagero Nikki , Mother of Michitsuna claims a motive “to answer, should anyone ask, what is it like, the life of a woman married to a highly placed man?” Heian nikki in particular, according to scholar Haruo Shirane, are united in “the fact that they all depict

624-588: The narrator encounters. Heldt, Gustav. Navigating Narratives: Tsurayuki's Tosa Diary as History and Fiction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2024. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674295827 This article related to a poem is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Poetic diary The English term poetic diary was used by the Princeton University scholar/translator Earl Miner in his book, Japanese Poetic Diaries . Traditionally, composed of

650-427: The personal life of a historical personage.” Thematically, many diaries lay heavy emphasis on time and poetry. The Heian period ushered a revival of Japanese classical poetry, waka , and native vernacular writing, kana . Waka, traditional Japanese thirty-one syllable poetry, was used for purposes ranging from official proclamations and poetry contests to private matters of courtship, and became crucial to success in

676-546: The rise of diaries such as Abutsu-ni ’s Izayoi Nikki and travel diaries such as Matsuo Bashō 's Oku no Hosomichi . In the modern period, confessional diaries such as Higuchi Ichiyō 's Ichiyō Nikki and Nagai Kafu 's Danchōtei Nichijō have gained in importance. Nikki bungaku as a term has only been around since the early 20th century and debate continues over strict delineation. However, three major characteristics of Japanese diary literature, though exceptions abound, are "the frequent use of poems, breaking away from

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