L’estetica delle «sette piante autunnali» nella poesia giapponese classica

In Man’yōshū almost 150 different species of plants are listed, which makes the anthology a sort of small botanic encyclopedia. In book VIII we find a diptych by Yamanoue no Okura, made up of a tanka and a sedōka, in which the poet lists those he considers the seven autumn flowers par excellence. Overall, these plants are usually named aki no nanakusa, the “seven autumn herbs”, and match an ideal pair with the so called haru no nanakusa, the “seven spring herbs”. However, if spring herbs are usually referred to as a whole by generic names as wakana, new herbs, the seven autumn herbs and their flowers are depicted one by one by the poets who use them to create a grammar of emotions, in which the natural elements blend with the human ones. The paper focuses on the stylistic features arisen from the seven autumn herbs in Japanese poetry, from the period of Man’yōshū up to Kamakura period.