At Japanese court between the 8th and 12th century there operated Buddhist schools who intervened into court poetry circles through clerics, and so introduced various Buddhistic concepts and related aesthetics into Japanese poetry. The peak of popularity of the waka poetry form occurred at the start of the Kamakura period (1185-1333), at around the same time as through reformation new Buddhist schools developed from the old ones, and concepts developed on Buddhist doctrine (for example yūgen) became popular in literary circles. In my master's thesis, I analyze the court poetry collection Shin kokin wakashū (1205), in which I present concrete examples of main Buddhist concepts and the aesthetics derived from them. In the thesis’ theoretical part, I define the concepts of Buddhism (old and new schools), the poetic form waka, and Buddhist concepts and aesthetics that are most often found in Japanese literature, and in the empirical part I try to find indirect and direct mentions of the aforementioned Buddhist concepts by analyzing the collection, themes, and words in the poems. The master's thesis analyses a limited number of poems by six authors who were poetically active at the time of the collection's publication and who are known to have drawn inspiration for their literary work from Buddhist doctrine. The aim of my master's thesis is to present the influence of Buddhist doctrine on Japanese poetry with concrete examples of indirect and direct mentions and connections to selected Buddhist concepts, and to stimulate further discussion about the relation between Japanese literature and religion.
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