Modern Japanese Writers and Kanshi

This book explores the practice among Japanese writers in the modern era of composing kanshi, traditional Sinitic poetry. For the Japanese, writing poetry in Literary Sinitic (also known as Classical Chinese) is an “exophonic” practice, referring to the act of writing in a language other than one’s native tongue. Meiji period (1868-1912) writers who, like generations of Japanese before them, received a traditional Confucian education, including studies in Literary Sinitic, were by and large capable of composing kanshi. As a result of changes in the Japanese education system following the Imperial Rescript on Education of 1890, and of shifting attitudes toward China after the Sino-Japanese War (1894-95), subsequent generations of Japanese were less proficient in Literary Sinitic. Yet, as this book documents, throughout the twentieth century and even in the twenty-first century, a small number of Japanese writers have continued to produce kanshi. Moreover, each generation of Japanese writers who have composed kanshi has turned to kanshi composition for a certain purpose and directed it to a specific audience in an act that this study refers to as “exophonic literary performance.” Interestingly, as the Japanese literary community has become increasingly multicultural, writers with roots in China have appeared, for whom the exophonic performance of kanshi takes on a special meaning, challenging the very idea of what it means to be a Japanese writer.