Ki no Tsurayuki (redirected from Kino Tsurayuki)

Ki no Tsurayuki (kē nō ts`rä`y`kē), c.872–945, early Japanese diarist, literary theorist, and poet. Renowned for his erudition and skill in Chinese and Japanese poetry, Tsurayuki took the leading role in the compilation of the Kokinwakashû [collection of ancient and modern verse], the first imperial anthology of poetry. His much-cited preface to that work is the first formal articulation of a Japanese poetics and established a paradigm for future generations of poetic criticism. Tsurayuki's Tosa nikki [Tosa diary] (935), an account of an arduous journey by sea narrated in the first person by a female persona, represents the oldest extant Japanese prose fiction and the beginnings of the great tradition of diary literature.

Bibliography

See H. C. McCullough, Brocade by Night (1985).