Mid-Tang Exchange Poetry, the Kingdom of Parhae, and the Reception of Bai Juyi in Early Heian Japan, Part 1: Parhae Envoys and the Yuan-Bai Style of Exchange Poetry

Scholars have long been puzzled as to why the poetry of mid-Tang poet Bai Juyi 白居 (772–846) enjoyed tremendous popularity at the Heian court (794–1185), while the poetry of other Tang poets, which is known to have reached Japan, received relatively little attention. In this essay, Heian appreciation of Bai Juyi is placed in the context of the “Yuan-Bai style,” which was propagated across East Asia through the corpus of the poetic exchanges between Bai Juyi and Yuan Zhen 元稹 (779–831), and to the popularity of this model within the poetry regularly exchanged between Heian poets and the envoys from the Kingdom of Parhae 渤海 (698–926) during the ninth and early tenth centuries. Thus, this essay first traces the role of Parhae as the driving force behind the Heian reception of Bai Juyi’s work and then explores the effects of this connection in the practice of early Heian Sinitic poetry.