ABSTRACT
Titsingh offers some extremely interesting examples of satirical political verses. They have scarcely survived in other contexts. The butt of most of what follows is the hated Tanuma Yamashiro-no-kami Okitomo, who was assassinated in summer 1784, when Titsingh was in Japan for his final stint as chief. However, it should not be imagined that these are really examples of what any literary person of the time would have regarded as ‘Japanese poetry’: they are not in the true courtly vernacular form of waka nor even regular examples of popular haikai.
