Landscapes of Power: Nature Imagery and the <i>tennōsei</i> Ideology in Meiji-era <i>utakai hajime</i>

Abstract The Imperial Office of Poetry (Outadokoro 御歌所) was established in 1869 as a court ministry of the Imperial Household Office, and was part of a series of Meiji-era institutions designed to emulate the prestige of the Nara period Imperial Court in order to legitimise the political myth of the Meiji-era Imperial Restoration. Outadokoro’s longest lasting legacy was the reinvention and organisation of the New Year’s Imperial Poetry Reading, utakai hajime 歌会始. When it became a national event in 1874, Outadokoro members encouraged all Japanese people to compose poems on the imperial theme ( odai 御題), a careful selection of which were then published in the major newspapers of the time. This paper examines how nature imagery was instrumentalized to construct the mythical topography of the nation through culturally significant toponyms drawing on Shintō myths and beliefs, to reinforce the idea of national unity, and to glorify the Imperial reign. As an isolated event that continued the courtly tradition of waka poetry gatherings and largely ignored the Meiji period’s poetry reforms, utakai hajime provides a vivid framework for the quantitative and qualitative analysis of ideological tropes in poetic vocabulary, which in turn reveal an ongoing discourse of poetic celebration of Imperial rule itself. This study further examines other genres of poetry such as parodic haiku and kyōka poems from Marumaru Chinbun 團團珍聞, written in response to the prescribed imperial themes of utakai hajime , highlighting the broad and varied reception of this invented tradition.