Representations of Power : The Literary Politics of Medieval Japan

\(\square\) his chapter analyzes the role that the poetic act played in the fourteenth century in providing competing emperors with a political program of cultural legitimation. Our examination focuses on how poets from rival schools appropriated the means of cultural production-courtly language, aesthetic rules, mythological thought--to justify the claims of their imperial patrons to the legitimacy of their position at the center of the political body. A few examples of individual voices belonging to opposite camps illustrate the centrality of poetic discourse in the creation of the ruler's cultural capital that constantly assists him along the path of legitimation.