482 ASUKA AND NARA CULTURE
private possession of his contemporary Otomo no Yakamochi. Ha-
manari, working during a period from which nothing by Yakamochi
remains, shows the increasing focus on Chinese literary culture al-
ready dominating the court. The Kakyo
hydshiki,
the earliest Japanese
document in poetic criticism, is a curious product of those times.
Although seriously misconceived, it has value in the history of thought
as an attempt to understand one's own culture through foreign eyes.
And the theory of the "poetic ills" was by no means laid to rest with
Hamanari; it was still being discussed four hundred years later.
2
?
The prose text of the
Kakyo hydshiki is
in Chinese, and the poems are
spelled out in phonogram
(man'ydgana)
orthography. Another
kambun
document with phonetic usages for poems, proper nouns, and the like
that has come down from Asuka-Nara times is the Jdgu
Shotoku Hod
teisetsu
(Anecdotes of the sovereign dharma King Shotoku of the Upper
Palace), a collection of records concerning Prince Shotoku probably
dating from the early eight century. It is the source of several anec-
dotes,
often of a miraculous character, about the revered scholar-
statesman-sage. In this respect it is not unlike the accounts incorported
into the Nihon
shoki
itself;
both provide early evidence of what became
a Prince Shotoku cult that endured until modern times. One pious
anecdote recounts how the prince, studying Buddhist texts with a
Korean master, was stumped by a difficult passage in the Lotus Sutra.
A
golden man came to the prince in a dream and revealed the meaning
of the
passage.
The Korean master returned to Korea with the interpre-
tation and, on later hearing of the prince's death, prayed to die on its
anniversary and meet him in the Pure Land. According to the account,
this wish was granted. This Buddhist
setsuwa
is precisely the sort of
narrative found in large numbers in Heian and later collections. Thus
the Jdgu
Shotoku
Hod
teisetsu,
together with the Kojiki and
Nihonshoki,
stands at the beginning of
a
major strand of Japanese literature that is
known to modern scholarship as
setsuwa
bungaku.
It also incorporates
three poems by one Kose no Mitsue on the prince's death, in this
respect, too, being similar to the chronicles in exemplifying at its
outset the literature's fondness for juxtaposing prose and verse. The
Jdgu
Shotoku
Hod
teisetsu
consists of five textual layers, the earliest of
which, genealogical in nature, probably stem from the traditions of the
Horyu-ji, Gango-ji, and other ancient temples and date from the first
27 Fujiwara no Toshiyori (?K>57-i 129) discusses the concept in Shunrai zuino (ca. 1115). Fuji-
wara no Shunzei (1114-1204) also mentions it in Korai futeisho (1197). Both writers are
critical of using these negative categories as guides in composition. Hashimoto Fumio, ed.,
Karonshu, Nihon koten bungaku
zenshu
(Tokyo: Shogakkan, 1975), vol. 20, pp. 57, 357-8.
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