>>96157952
I was writing facetiously but thanks for taking me seriously. :) yes, a smiley on 4chan
While samurai of the Edo period might have had to sit around twiddling their thumbs between counting beans or other such bureaucratic tasks (now I wish I'd added accountancy as a fourth item on my list), and samurai were admonished to know peaceful arts by the Shogun himself, people of the time knew artistic pursuits were an ancient practice. As promulgated by the Tokugawa shogunate
>From old the rule has been to practice the arts of peace on the left hand and the arts of war on the right; both must be mastered.
>Laws for the Military Houses
Popular belief says Lady Murasaki started writing her novel in the Moon Viewing Pavillion of Ishiyamadera; she had Genji hold a moon viewing party in Katsura. Waka were composed at these tsukimi.
In the Kamakura period waka had become a little more egalitarian, still upper class but lower ranks of the upper class found them hugely popular.
Shotetsu, born into a samurai family during the Muromachi, displayed a precocious ability for poety as a child. He became a zen monk in his early adulthood and spent a good deal of time teaching waka to samurai and to the shogun. Lamentably, a fire in his house destroyed both his house and his life's poetic work, 27 000 waka. I wonder, if not for that house fire would haiku now be so famous or instead would our Anglophone teachers be committing a crime against humanity by forcing us to write 31 syllables and calling it a waka.
>>96159450
>created during the Warring States
Sorry my friend, but you're a little bit off with that date. One of the reasons I mentioned Shotetsu is that he died very early in Sengokujidai which reinforces that samurai poetry writing is old. The few practices that I mentioned all arise no later than Heian or Kamakura, a couple of centuries or more before Japan's Warring States period. I didn't date ikebana above but it's pre-Warring States too.
