A Study on "Someda Tenjin Renga"

In the middle ages of Japan, "Renga", a kind of Japanese poetry, was most favorite literature. Not only poets ("Rengashi") but priests and warriors composed "Renga". In Yamato, now Nara Prefecture, powerful families who lived in "Tsuge" County, a mountainous district, were especially eager to compose Renga. They gathered together once a year, wrote one thousand lines in three days, and presented them to the god of literature, "Tenjin", who had been dedicated in Someda Village. Therefore their works are called "Someda Tenjin Renga". Many manuscripts of "Someda Tenjin Renga" have come down to us through five centuries, and now they are kept in Nara National Museum. There are a few studies on these manuscripts. In order to establish a complete text, I have made a study about such problems as fixing dates to the undated manuscripts and arranging the detached manuscripts in order. I have made a table about the results gained through this study