Ki no Tsurayuki was born to a prominent family in
Japan. Little is known of his personal life, but
Tsurayuki served as a government official and librarian
of the Imperial Records Office in the early
10th century. Between 902 and 905, he was asked
by the Imperial Court to compile a collection of
Japanese poetry, the Kokinshu, or Collection of Old
and New Japanese Poems.He was also given the task
of writing the Japanese preface to the collection,
in which he provided an explanation of how to
criticize poetry. Believing that the artistic value of
poetry lay in its effect on the emotions, he wrote:
“It is poetry which, without effort, moves heaven
and earth, stirs the feelings of the invisible gods
and spirits, smooths the relations of men and
women, and calms the hearts of fierce warriors.”
Tsurayuki was himself a first-rate poet.His collection
Tsurayuki Shu appeared first with 700
poems, and in a second version containing 900
poems. Translator William Porter says his poetry is
distinguished by “artless simplicity and quiet
humor.” In addition, he wrote a travel book, Tosa
nikki, or The Tosa Diary, (935), in which he relates
the details of a journey that he took from Tosa to
Kyoto in 934. The Tosa Diary ranks among the
Japanese classics, and is valued as a model for composition
in native Japanese style. The Diary introduced
a significant development into Japanese
literature because Tsurayuki wrote this work, as he
had the preface to Kokinshu, in the phonetic kana
syllabary, rather than in Chinese characters. The
use of phonetic characters was considered
“women’s language,” as opposed to the ideographic
characters that constituted the “men’s language;”
therefore, in the Diary, Tsurayuki writes from the
point of view of a woman character and refers to
himself in the third person.Altogether, Tsurayuki’s
brilliant prose and poetry rank him among the
greatest of Japanese writers of the early Heian period
(794–1185).
English Versions of Works by
Ki no Tsurayuki
Kokinshu: A Collection of Poems Ancient and Modern.
Translated by Laurel Rasplica Rodd and Mary
Catherine Henkenius. Edited by Mary Catherine
Henkenius. Boston: Cheng & Tsui, 1999.
The Tosa Diary. Translated by William N. Porter. Rutland,
Vt.: Charles E. Tuttle, 1981.
A Work about Ki no Tsurayuki
Schalow, Paul Gordon and Janet A.Walker, eds. The
Woman’s Hand: Gender and Theory in Japanese
Women’s Writing. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University
Press, 1996, 5, 41–71, 78.