Episode 449 - The Tastemaker
Added 2022-08-05 16:21:47 +0000 UTCSo, one fun factoid about this episode: as I was going through books to pick up to do research with my generous patreon funding, I realized that the most comprehensive biography of Fujiwara no Teika was written by Paul Atkins. Which was fun, because I actually know him personally: Atkins was my classical Japanese instructor back in the day. I still have the first lines of Hojoki memorized thanks to him! I never had much of a talent for the subject, but I do remember him well as an instructor, so it was fun to "run into him", so to speak, in this context.
This episode, like the one on Ki no Tsurayuki, has been a long time coming: the fact that it took this long really has more to do with my own lack of background going in than with any sort of value judgment on the importance of the subject. Indeed, one of my bigger challenges with this script was that Teika's career was so interesting I didn't have as much time as I would have liked to talk about his impact in simply preserving so much classical literature. As I alluded to, his choices about what was and was not worth copying still impact what we think of as 'canonical' from this period and that's a pretty outsized legacy!
Anyway: that's probably enough poetry to last us for a bit. Still making my mind up as to what I'll be researching next (I do have an interesting pair of episodes on the late Edo period ready to go in the interrim); I picked up a great book on the JMSDF that I might focus on next.
But I've got a while to make up my mind because (as I said on air), there won't be a new episode next week. I'm taking some vacation time, so I'll see you all in two weeks!
