seum of Japanese History

Although haikai no renga2 was central to the poetic practice of haikai poets throughout the Edo period, its status within the canon of Japanese literature has been problematic since Masaoka Shiki declared that it was not bungaku. 3 Although Shiki admitted that haikai no renga texts had “literary ” elements, linked verse values change over unity so his final judgment was that it could not be considered a part of bungaku. Although haikai no renga texts are now clearly read as bungaku – most major collections of pre-modern Japanese literature contain at least a few sequences – Higashi Akimasa still felt the need to argue why linked verse should be considered a 1 I would like to thank panel members and the audience at AAS when this paper was first presented, the anonymous readers for EMJ, and Lim Beng Choo for their helpful comments. An earlier version of this paper is part of a chapter in my dissertation. Tanuki is sometimes translated as racoon dog. It is a trickster animal. 2 I use the term haikai no renga to refer to haikai style linked verse sequences composed before the 1890s and renku to refer to those composed after. The most important difference between these two is that renku were composed within or in response to the regime of bungaku while haikai no renga were composed before bungaku in the modern sense of the word. In the same way and for the same reason, I refer to the seventeen syllable poem now commonly called haiku as hokku when composed before th