Fuyo Wakashu (風葉和歌集)

Fuyo Wakashu is a collection of waka (Japanese poems) based on fictional stories in the mid Kamakura Period. A person who was presumably FUJIWARA no Tameie complied the collection at a request of Emperor Gosaga's empress Omiyain (Kitsushi SAIONJI) and completed in 1271. Fuyo Wakashu originally consisted 20 volumes just like other anthologies of poems collected by Imperial command, but the existing one lacks the last two volumes. The collection contains 1400 poems (excluding those in the lost volumes).

From fictional stories made in the period between the mid Heian to early Kamakura Period, including "Genji monogatari (The Tale of Genji)," "Utsuho monogatari (The Tale of Utsuho)," and "Sagoromo Monogatari (The Tale of Sagoromo)," poems wrote by fictional characters in the stores were picked out and kotobagaki (captions) were added to describe the summary of the stories. Among some two hundred stories from which poems were picked out, most of them had been lost and captions in Fuyo Wakashu are the only source to know the summary of these stories. This collection is a useful supplement to incomplete extant stories such as "Yoru no nezame" and "Hamamatsu Chunagon Monogatari (The Tale of Hamamatsu Chunagon)," not to mention stories such as "Mikakigahara," "Asakura," and "Amabito no moshiobi" that had been scattered and ultimately lost, and this fact makes Fuyo Wakashu a valuable document for the study of fictional stories in the Middle Ages (the times around the Heian period) together with "Mumyo Zoshi (Story Without a Name)."

Fuyo Wakashu is included in Higuchi Yoshimaro, ed., "Ocho monogatari shukasen" (Iwanami bunko), together with "Monogatari Nihyakuban Utaawase."

[Original Japanese]