Poems to Unite and Poems to Divide: What Audience Reactions Reveal About the Social Functions of Heian Waka

This paper is an inquiry into the social roots of waka’s popularity. Heian courtiers were passionately, even obsessively interested in waka. One need only glance at one of the major works of Heian vernacular literature, from Sei Shōnagon’s Pillow Book to Murasaki Shikibu’s Tale of Genji, to see for oneself the level of interest that this kind of short poetry was able to command among aristocrats. Drawing on an analysis of representations of reactions to poems in a variety of Heian texts, I argue that poetry served two only seemingly contradictory ideological needs: on the one hand, poems provided a potential source of social cohesion to a society almost obsessively concerned with distinctions. On the other hand, poems provided support for the social hierarchy by laying bare differences in level of cultural attainment. Both cohesion and distinction were important to the members of the Heian elite who, while certainly not unhappy with their position of privilege, longed for the solidarity and deep human bonds of the pre-ritsuryō community.