47 - Kanshibun in the late Edo period

Summary

The nineteenth century witnessed the peak, certainly in quantity and arguably in quality, of kanshi or Sinitic poetry and kanbun or Sinitic prose production in Japan. While these two terms, along with the collective kanshibun, it is worth bearing in mind a slight distinction between Anglophone and Japanese usage. A cognizance of the change is evident in the recollections of the scholar Hirose Tanso, whose Kangien academy in Kyushu trained thousands of disciples. The xingling theory's emphasis on individualistic expression that its exponents often turned their attention to their own everyday experiences rather than trying to project themselves into the poetic realms of their High Tang predecessors. Highly developed commercial publishing and the rise of kanshibun literacy had dramatically enlarged the audience for poetic anthology texts. In addition to the orthodox modes of kanshi and kanbun composition that flourished in late Edo, the era also saw the emergence of humorous genres that amused by willfully deviating from convention.