Ki No Tsurayuki

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Ki No Tsurayuki

 

Born 882; died 946. Japanese poet.

Ki no Tsurayuki held a lowly position at the imperial court. In 922 he headed the committee that compiled the first court anthology of Japanese poetry, Kokinshu. The anthology contained poems that served as classic examples for subsequent poets. Four hundred and forty of Ki no Tsurayuki’s poems, written in the form of the tanka, are extant. His Tosa Diary (936), consisting of prose landscape sketches intermingled with lyrical verses, marked the origin of the genre of the nikki, or lyrical diary. Ki no Tsurayuki is also known as the first theorist of Japanese poetry.

WORKS

In Russian translation:
“Putevye zapiski iz Tosa.” In Vostok, vol. 1. Moscow, 1935.
In the collection Iaponskaia poeziia. Moscow, 1956.
In the collection Iaponskie piatistishiia. Moscow, 1971.

REFERENCES

Konrad, N. I. Iaponskaia literatura ν obraztsakh i ocherkakh. Leningrad, 1927.
Literatura Vostoka ν srednie veka, part 1. Moscow, 1970.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.