ABSTRACT
It is fair to say that most of the innovative processes that appeared in Japanese poetry in the latter half of the Heian period are in one way or another connected to the re-evaluation of the poetic tradition, and by proxy to the problematic of imitation, allusion, plagiarism and originality. The efforts of a few mid-Heian poets, such as Sone no Yoshitada, to broaden the scope of waka vocabulary and to introduce expressions to the poetic language that must have been current in the daily speech of courtiers, though not in literary expression, were not particularly successful and the general consensus among most poets of different houses seems to have been that the elegant vocabulary of the first three anthologies was what one should use when writing one’s own verse. In a cultural system where any successful courtier was supposed to master the art of poetry to some extent, this limitation was doubly practical. First, it limited the amount of strictly necessary competence to a relatively small textual corpus which did not require full-time dedication to be mastered. Second, it set up a certain standard which disqualified the texts of those who had not been initiated into the cultural world of court aristocracy at all, such as warriors, in spite of their hold on political power.
