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Shōtetsu (正徹, 1381-1459 CE) was a Japanese poet during the Muromachi period, and is considered to have been the last poet in the courtly waka tradition;〔Miner 1968, p.139; "Shotetsu is thought by some Japanese today to be the finest poet of the century; the twenty thousand poems of his personal collection, the ''Shōkonshū'', show that he was also one of the most prolific poets in the whole court tradition."〕 a number of his disciples were important in the development of the renga art form, which led to the haiku. ==History== He was born in 1381 in a minor fortified town in the then province of Bitchū (now Okayama) to a samurai of middling rank named Komatsu Ysukiyo. About ten years after his birth, Shōtetsu's family moved to Kyoto for unknown reasons. At approximately the age of 15 (by the Occidental count), he was sent to the religious center of Nara where he became an acolyte in an unspecified Buddhist temple. He would spend the next five years there studying, among other things, Buddhist scripture. Shortly after his father's death in 1400 CE, Shōtetsu moved back to Kyoto, and sought out a fellow named Imagawa Ryōshun (b. 1325/1326 ?, d. 1417/1420) and asked him to instruct him in the "Way of Poetry". This was not an unexpected visit for Ryōshun; he and Shōtetsu had met many times previously. It was this Imagawa Ryōshun, retired military leader, lay priest, respected amateur poet, and accomplished author of polemic essays attacking the enemies of the Reizei poetic clan, who was apparently instrumental (the relevant passage gives an incorrect age for Ryōshun at the period it supposedly occurred, leading Inada Toshinori to believe that the passage conflates a number of events; thus it may be misleading as to the circumstances that introduced Shōtetsu to courtly poetry), in introducing the young Shōtetsu (whose personal name then still was Sonmyōmaru, given name Masakiyo) to poetic composition. From an autobiographic portion of Shōtetsu's extended essay on poetry, ''Shōtetsu Monogatari'':〔 (Translation of ''Shōtetsu Monogatari''.)〕 ''"A certain preceptor of the Ontoku'in once said to me, "If you want to compose poetry, I will take you with me to the civil administrator's house across the way." At that period of my life, I was still wearing my hair long in the manner of young children, and I felt embarrassed by my extreme youth, but nonetheless I went with the preceptor to the civil administrator's house. ... Then, when I arrived at the poetry meeting itself on the 25th, the highest places on the one side were occupied by Reizei no Tamemasa and Tamekuni, and on the other side by the former shogunal deputy... () was at that time a lay priest of more than 80 years... After this occasion, I just kept going again and again to those meetings, and thus gained experience in poetic composition. I was fourteen years old at the time."'' Shōtetsu studied classical courtly poetry with Ryōshun, and other areas of literature, including of course famous works like ''The Tales of Ise'', ''Essays in Idleness'', and was even inducted into the secret traditions relating to the famed ''Tale of Genji'' and the''Shin Kokin Wakashū''. With such an influential master, Shōtetsu met and learned from many of the most influential poets of the age. In 1406, Shōtetsu left his master, entering a Kyoto Rinzai Zen temple called Tōfuku-ji; no doubt he was admitted in no little part because of his relationship to Ryōshun (now in his nineties), who had previously gone to that temple. It was during this period that the Reizei family and its poetic ideals (along with associated poets) flourished and received high titles and numerous grants of land. As he was solidly in this school of poetry, Shōtetsu prospered as well. Eventually, cut loose by his two mentors' deaths (Tamemasa would die in 1417, and Ryōshun in either 1417, or 1420), Shōtetsu embarked on a short journey - one of the very few journeys far away from Kyoto in his life - to visit various "utamakura" (places famously commemorated in poetry); upon his return to Kyoto, he plunged whole-heartedly into Kyoto's poetry scene, having decided to make his life's work poetry, and not Buddhism. By 1424, he had left his temple for a modest hut on the outskirts of Kyoto, as befitted a professional poet with the accompanying hosts of disciples, patrons, and invitations to head poetry gatherings at the most noble families' homes (and eventually at the residences of the Ashikaga shoguns themselves). But this happy era for Shōtetsu could not last forever. It ended between the second and third day of the fourth month of the year 1432: ''"On the night of the second, I stayed over at the house of the Chief of Central Affairs, and awakened to a report that my hut, "Imakumano", had burned in a fire in the neighborhood in the middle of the night- a report that was to no avail, for the damage was already done, with all of the poems I had composed since my twentieth year, all 27,000 of them, in more than 30 volumes, gone up in smoke, not a single one escaping- and this along with all my books and hand-copied treasures."'' This was not an isolated setback for the 51-year-old Shōtetsu. The shogun Ashikaga Yoshimochi had died in 1428, and his younger brother Ashikaga Yoshinori (b. 1394, d. 1441) had succeeded him. Unlike his deceased brother, Yoshinori, with regard to the poetic dispute between the Reizei and the Asukai, distinctly preferred the Asukai's poetry; in addition, several traditional biographies of Shōtetsu claim that Yoshinori had a personal antipathy toward him, going so far as to place Shōtetsu under house arrest. Shōtetsu would suffer two major blows from this official hostility. First, the income from his hereditary estates was confiscated. This was a major financial blow to him, but by no means fatal. The second blow struck straight at his heart; he was denied inclusion in the 21st, and last ever, Imperial anthology of waka which was compiled and edited by the Asukai. This exclusion from the ''Shinshokukokin Wakashū'' ("New Collection of Ancient and Modern Times Continued") meant that Shōtetsu could never achieve the final pinnacle of recognition for poetic merit, and that his name would be permanently diminished for all time; it is difficult to overstate how important inclusion in an Imperial anthology was to medieval poets. In the wake of this blow, Shōtetsu became a hermit, seeing few people, going to fewer gatherings, and composing even fewer poems. His retreat ended in 1441 with the assassination of Yoshinori by one of his generals; Yoshinori's partisan spirit had extended beyond the field of poetry, and irritated many. Shōtetsu returned to his former place, now a highly respected and experienced poet in the liberal Rezei tradition. These were good and prosperous times for him, as he had entry into the most exclusive homes, and indeed, would even tutor the new shogun, Ashikaga Yoshimaga (b. 1435, d. 1490), in the intricacies of the ''Tale of Genji''; his reward for this lengthy tutoring would be the return of his familial estate. From this period on, Shōtetsu's health declined. The shadow of the approaching Ōnin War was even then visible in the riots and disturbances which began occurring a number of years before. Shōtetsu had by this point also outlived many of his patrons, students, teachers and friends. After three years of prolonged illness, Shōtetsu died at the age of 79 in the year 1459. He had begun copying out the ''Tale of Genji'', expecting to complete it before he died. He finished the first chapter. In his later years, his greatest student was Shunkei (1406-1475), who, while he greatly admired his former teacher and Teika, worked not just in waka, but in renga as well, where he was known for his usage of the ''yugen'' and ''yōembi'' (ethereal beauty) styles. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Shōtetsu」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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