LeRon Harrison’s Reviews > The Pursuit of Harmony: Poetry and Power in Early Heian Japan > Status Update

Would definitely be interested in your opinion, Le Ron, as I'm just now skimming through the intro, with the idea of using it in the fall. One thing--what is the status of the "dai" topic during early Heian, contra later in the uta tradition?

I like the book and Gus's approach to poetry. He is doing what McCullough didn't by looking at kanbun texts and thinking through the role they play in the politics of the court. I'm reading it to begin working on revising a chapter of my thesis to be an article; his argument that waka and yamato uta are not the same really has me re-examining my understanding of the Wakatai Jisshu, which I examined in the chapter.

As to "dai", I'm not quite sure what you exactly you're looking for. Gus' stance is at the time as the power is going from the Emperor to the Fujiwara there is a shift from the Chinese modes of power largely based on the lunar calendar to the seasonal cycles. The key moment of this transition is when the plum tree in front of the palace dies and the Fujiwara replace it with a cherry tree and tachibana tree. The Fujiwara had been planting cherry trees and composing poetry, as Gus explains, to mark the transition between eras. But the Fujiwara planting the cherry tree in place of the plum is a shift to the seasonal and the Fujiwara marking time from the Chinese model and the Emperor marking time. If anything it reveals the reification of topics in my opinion.

Gus does an interesting analysis of the topics of the Kokinshu showing how they make the "harmony" that is central to his argument. This is something I think McCullough didn't do and Tom LaMarre couldn't do. I hope that helps you.

Thanks LeRon. Great review.
On the dai question, I was always under the impression
that the dai early on was less topic than title/foreword
early in the tradition and later became conventionalized
as the more familiar dai-topic of medieval poets. In the
intro it seems like the author is treating dai as the
conventional topic and so seemed anachronistic at first, but
maybe my first impression was wrong from the start.