Katherine Whatley (Stanford), "Creatures Singing Songs, Creatures Writing Poetry: Animal Voices and Aurality in Early Japanese Poetry"

This presentation explores representations of animal and insect sounds in Heian-era waka poetry—a type of poetry in the 5-7-5-7-7 syllabic structure popular in the imperial court—with particular attention to the Kokin Wakashū (Collection of Ancient and Modern Poems, ca. 905). I argue that the deeply aural quality of the waka genre—it was often sung or chanted—helps explain the prevalence of insect and animal voices within it.

In the preface to the collection, Ki no Tsurayuki expounds on the connection between poetry, humans, and the natural world: “Hearing the cries of the warbler among the blossoms or the calls of the frog that lives in the waters, how can we doubt that every living creature sings its song?” Playing on the ambiguity of the word uta in Japanese (which can mean poem as well as song), Tsurayuki draws a parallel between poetry and the songs of humans and the songs of the birds and creatures surrounding him, expressing the deeply aural quality of waka, as well as its close connection to the voices of the creatures around us.

Of course, these poems are not a direct representation of “real” nature, but reflect a mediated, courtly construction of nature that idealizes the temperate seasons and the sounds of birds, as other scholars have explored. Yet this mediated nature is not irrelevant or meaningless, and Tsurayuki’s words are not merely metaphoric. This paper seeks to examine the way poetry and song facilitated a connection, albeit mediated, to nature through the sounds of animals.

This paper also juxtaposes waka with the imayō popular songs in Ryōjin Hishō (“Songs to Make the Dust Dance on the Rafters,” ca. 1180). For example: “Under the young brambles, the weasel plays the flute, the monkey dances, the grasshopper drums to keep time”—a song, written down as a poem, about animals playing music. This paper argues that waka and imayō illuminate the deep interconnections between song and poem, performance and the written word, and the sounds of humans and sounds of nature. 

Katherine Whatley is a PhD Candidate in Japanese Literature studying classical Japanese poetry, narrative and music. Her research spans literary studies, religious studies, musicology and gender/sexuality studies. She is also a performer of the koto (transverse Japanese harp) whose musical interests include free jazz and improvised music, improvised music in the context of non-Western and folk musics, and Japanese jazz.