SOURCE: Kato, Hilda. “The Mumyōshō of Kamo no Chōmei and Its Significance in Japanese Literature.” Monumenta Nipponica 23, nos. 3-4 (1968): 321-49.

In the following essay, Katō examines Chōmei's ideas concerning poets and poetry. Some footnotes refer to appendices and tables not reprinted here.

The Background of Early Japanese Aesthetics

Before Japan was exposed to the overwhelming influence of continental civilization, the Japanese had a language fundamentally different from the Chinese, an indigenous religion called Shinto, and a distinctive hierarchical social system. The Japanese ruling clan, aware of Chinese advanced techniques and highly developed organizations, fostered contact with the continent. Approximately from the sixth century onward, the process of adopting Chinese models of political, social and economic institutions accelerated. Together with all kinds of techniques, the arts and the writing system, there also infiltrated alien ideas—Confucian, Buddhist and Taoist—which became part of the fast-developing Japanese...