The Foremost Style of Poetic Composition. Fujiwara Tameie's Eiga no Ittei

Abstract

I N 1256, at the age of forty-nine, Fujiwara Tameie NYVA*, 1198-1275, head of the Mikohidari M7fA house, Japan's most important family of court poets, took Buddhist vows as the result of a serious illness. His new status as the priest Yuikaku Ml did not, however, prevent him from continuing his conjugal relationship with his adored wife, the ambitious and energetic lady known to history as Abutsu the Nun Wi{ALE, 1222?-1283.1 Indeed, several years after Tameie had taken holy orders, Abutsu bore him two sons, Tamesuke AMW, 1263-1328, and Tamemori At, 1265-1328. These children of his old age brought unimagined joy and consolation to Tameie, who doted especially on the elder, Tamesuke, and as soon as the boy was old enough to understand the simplest rudiments of classical poetry, his father began to instruct him in the conventions of poetic composition and the knowledge and lore of the waka tradition. In this activity, Tameie was enthusiastically seconded by Abutsu, who had high ambitions for her children and was secretly determined that Tamesuke should in due course rank with or even supplant Tameie's eldest son and principal heir, Tameuji A, 1222-1286, as the court's supreme authority on poetic matters. To further these plans, she not only took an even more active part than her husband in Tamesuke's education, but also persuaded Tameie to alter his will in favor of this younger son. He deeded to Tamesuke the rights to one of his most valuable landed estates, and handed over to him many of the precious poetic collections, treatises, diaries, and other documents that proved the legitimacy of the Mikohidari family as supreme arbiters of classical poetry.