Hermeneutics of Acrostics: From Kūkai to Tsurayuki

Abstract

This study is an attempt to show how the poetic figure of the acrostic was constructed in ninth-century Japan as a tantric semiological implement in a poetic discourse, in which poets working in Sino-Japanese or kanabun constructed kami cultic ritual in various forms and contexts within the broad framework of Kūkai’s tantric Buddhist semiology. Three poetic texts, a Sino-Japanese poem by Kūkai and two prose-poem texts from Kokin wakashū and/or Ise monogatari, all of which contain an acrostic, are analysed and interpreted, and evidence Show more