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One thing I was wondering; were each of the hundred poems in this collection written in Japanese, or were any written in Chinese?
I've been reading a collection of essays about the "centres and peripheries" of the Heian era, and the topic has come up regarding how prominent the use of written Chinese was at the time, relative to how it has been percieved to be in subsequent eras. Essentially, the argument is that the later prominence of works written in Japanese has perhaps obscured the importance of written Chinese by the people living at the time; that it was used for more than just "official" documents, and had at least some role to play in the more artistic side of things (which has been presented as being covered only by the energence of writing in Japanese in that era). Though, it has also been argued that this reflected more of a "China within Japan" appropriation, rather than being tied explicitly to what was concurrently happening in literary circles within China itself.
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