Uta-awase (歌合 or 歌合せ, sometimes romanized utaawase), poetry contests or waka matches, are a distinctive feature of the Japanese literary landscape from the Heian period. Significant to the development of Japanese poetics, the origin of group composition such as renga,[citation needed] and a stimulus to approaching waka as a unified sequence and not only as individual units, the lasting importance of the poetic output of these occasions may be measured also from their contribution to the imperial anthologies: 92 poems of the Kokinshū and 373 of the Shin Kokinshū were drawn from uta-awase.[1][2][3]
- ^ McCullough, Helen Craig (1985). Brocade by Night: 'Kokin Waskashū' and the Court Style in Japanese Classical Poetry. Stanford University Press. pp. 240–254. ISBN 0-8047-1246-8.
- ^ Konishi, Jin'ichi (1986). A History of Japanese Literature II: The Early Middle Ages. Princeton University Press. pp. 199–203. ISBN 0-691-10177-9.
- ^ Keene, Donald (1999). Seeds in the Heart: Japanese Literature from the Earliest Times to the Late Sixteenth Century. Columbia University Press. pp. 648–652. ISBN 0-231-11441-9.