≪蒹葭雅集図≫からみる蒹葭堂会の有様 ―絵・詩・跋文の総合的な検討を通じて―

Abstract

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the pictures, poems, and epilogue in Kenka’s Elegant Gathering(Kenka gashūzu) that was produced in Osaka during the 1764 Chosŏn Communication Embassy to Japan. Given that there was no precedent in the history of such missions for the Koreans to commission the Japanese to produce a picture scroll, the production of this piece and its role in the gift exchange merits our attention. This paper focuses on the Kenkadō kai, the salon of poets that is the main subject of the picture scroll, and provides a comprehensive analysis of the piece’s structural elements―that is, its pictures, poems, and epilogue. Moreover, the paper uncovers the nature of companionship among men of letters in Kyoto and Osaka by comparing the contents of the Kenkadō kai’s “House Rules” (sōdō kaiyaku), codified in 1763, one year prior to the Osaka exchange, with the preface and poems contained in the picture scroll. The paper begins by unveiling the visual imagery of the pictures and poems as well as the nature of the Kenkadō kai, after analyzing the contents of the epilogue. Finally, the paper compares the piece’s poems with the contents of the “House Rules,” and clarifies the nature of companionship in the eighteenth-century salon of poets that was the Kenkadō kai. The paper also considers in detail society leader Kimura Kenkadō’s ideas on “propriety” and “harmony,” emphasized by Daiten Kenjō in his epilogue. Moreover, insights from the paper suggest a clue for considering how the disbandment of the Kenkadō kai led to the founding of Konton shisha. Not only is this picture scroll significant because it was produced for Korean men of letters, but it also demonstrates how picture scrolls can serve as valuable sources for understanding various aspects of the gatherings between Japanese literary figures. This can only mean that there existed an “image of the literary men’s world” common to Japanese and Korean men of letters in this period. I hope that this inquiry will provide important clues for examining the characteristics of both Japanese and Korean salons of poets in this period.