Sinitic Poetry in Early Heian Japan: Kidendō Literacy, Banquet Culture, and the Sugawara House

In this paper, I explore the intimate connection between the Sugawara House and the composition of Sinitic poetry for institutionalised poetry banquets in early Heian Japan. While poetry remained a marginal occupation for the Confucian scholars trained at the Bureau of Education, its performance at banquets constituted a prestigious niche that could be occupied by those who sought to exploit it as an autonomous form of cultural capital. Here I sketch the contours of this connection and analyse a number of anthologizing strategies at work in the personal collection of the renowned early Heian scholar and poet Sugawara no Michizane (845-903) known as Kanke bunsō (Literary Drafts of the Sugawara House).