Fûga is a word that comes up a lot in discussions of haikai, especially when it comes to Bashô, so it makes sense to figure out where it comes from. Ibi tells us that it originates in Shijing (Classic of poetry, or Book of odes) 詩經, the collection of poems dated 10th-7th BCE that is one of the major books of the Chinese literary canon. Its contents break down into feng 風 (airs), xiaoya (lesser odes, maybe?) 小雅, daya 大雅 (grand odes?) and song 頌 (hymns). "Fûga" comes from the first three types, feng and ya, and thus is more or less synonymous with "poetry." In the early modern period, under the influence of Confucian thought, poetry = shi 詩 = kanshi, waka, and haikai = fûga.
Ibi notes that in the modern period, accounts of the history of Confucianism in early modern Japan go this way: the bakufu underpinned its social system with neo-Confucianism, which focused on the development of personal morality through self-cultivation. In the Genroku period Itô Jinsai 伊藤仁斎 advanced a kind of humanism-tinged school of thought that came to be called kogaku ("antiquarian studies"); he took a dim view of Zhu Xi's addition of Da Xue and Zhong Yong to the Confucian canon, and advocated that greater attention be paid to recapturing an "authentic" understanding of the Analects and Mencius without recourse to commentary. Later, Ogyû Sorai 荻生徂徠 picked up on a lot of the ideas put forth by Jinsai, adding in an emphasis on the appreciation and composition of music and art, which eventually resulted in the study of literature gaining independence from inquiry into ethics and politics. However, he says that this version of the story needs some more exploration.
Ibi cites Nakamura Yukihiko's "Late Tokugawa-period Song scholars' views on literature" 「幕末宋学者達の文学観」 as saying that you can condense neo-Confucian views on literature into three points: 1) Literature is not something that one studies for itself, but as a means of conveyance towards expressing the Way (i.e., virtue) (載道); 2) Literature's purpose is to advance goodness and criticize vice (kanzen chôaku 勧善懲悪); 3) It's a mistake to get caught up in enjoying literature - it's just a means to an end, one's legitimate intentions should not be forgotten (ganbutsu sôshi 玩物喪志). Ibi disagrees with this formulation, saying that neo-Confucianists' idea of literature wasn't the same as what we'd consider literature today, including prose; what it really refers to is the content of Shi jing; that is to say, poetry. So point 3 is really talking about the proper attitude toward poetry. However, Ibi cautions against taking this too comprehensively. If this 3-point characterization were true, we'd expect to see Japanese neo-Confucianists writing very little poetry (kanshi), and for it to be strictly moralistic. However, in fact what we see is that they wrote a lot of poetry, and the themes they chose were diverse. So he disagrees with it.
He goes on to cite some very persuasive (and sometimes long) passages by Fujiwara Seika and Hayashi Razan about the centrality of literature to the cultivation of virtue. The main thing is that Razan in particular argues very pointedly in "Theories of 'Writing poems on the wind and celebrating the moon'" 「吟風弄月論」 (in Razan-sensei bunshû, vol. 24) that the great Confucian thinkers didn't see any contradiction between composing and enjoying poetry and the more philosophical pursuits of "the investigation of things" (格物) and "studying the principle of all things" (窮理); basically, they were all forms of self-cultivation that would make one more virtuous. His son Gahô 鵝峰 took up this theme also, as did bakufu adviser Hitomi Chikudô 人見竹洞 (more nice citations). They were much interested in the phrase 性情之正 (I'm not so great at at this stuff but I think it's something like "natural emotion," so the phrase is essentially "rectitude of natural emotion.") Which is something poetry allows you to do.
Ibi quotes a large passage from the Shijing preface to explain basic theories of the relationship between intention, mind, and feeling in Chinese poetry. In order to get to the bottom of it, I'm going to have to reread this, at the very least:
It seems to have something to do with the difference between nature 性, which is potential, and emotion 情, which arises spontaneously. Poetry is the very thing that comes into being when the motives of the mind are realized in words. I think Ibi is saying that Zhu Xi posits two different kinds of nature 性; good nature, emotions that are related to this are in accordance with the principles of the universe; and bad nature, emotions that are related to this are somehow corrupted. Poetry allows you to cultivate that good nature and get beyond the bad one. But I admit I find this pretty heavy going, and want to understand it better. The essence of the argument seems to turn on xingjing (seijô) 性情 and if I'm going to grasp it fully I have more reading to do.
OWEN, Stephen. “Foreword.” In The Book of Songs, translated by Arthur WALEY. New York: Grove Press, 1996. Pages xii-xxv.
In any case the point is that it's the close connection between this idea of improving the self, and poetry, and "fûga" as it is drawn from Shijing. In other words, because of this association with the Classic of Poetry, then poetry itself has this overtone of fûga, elegance in the sense of conferring moral goodness, the highest possible value. Ibi turns his attention to Kinoshita Junan 木下順庵, a late 17th-century Confucian scholar who was not only pretty famous in his own right, but also because he trained more famous people, like Arai Hakuseki 新井白石, Muro Kyûsô 室鳩巣 and Gion Nankai. Ibi quotes passages from the writings of both Kyûsô and Nankai discussing the importance of fûga in poetry, making a distinction between the elegant and the vulgar, in terms that point directly back to Shijing in some ways but ultimately pass over this 性情之正 ("rectitude of natural emotion") formulation. Ibi goes on to talk about Nankai's theory of fûga in terms of a theory of ga and zoku, that is to say the distinction between elegance and vulgarity.
To conclude (with the admission that I leave a lot out here), Ibi cites Hayashi Gahô saying that for scholars (jûsha 儒者) poetry isn't the same as it is for poets (詩人). While poets might have aesthetic concerns, scholars are devoted to rectifying their emotions, and then expressing that rectitude in spare, simple words (洒落平淡なるのみ). Nankai seems to take it a step further: he doesn't worry so much about the rectitude aspects, but more about authentic expression of human emotion; i.e., not seijô 性情 so much as ninjô 人情 (human feeling) or shinjô 真情 (real feeling).
Notes to myself:
程顥 Cheng Hao (Bochun 伯淳)
程頤 Cheng Yi (Zhengshu 正叔) W.-G.: Ch'eng I
居敬窮理 kyokeikyûri: dwelling in reverence and making a profound study of the fundamental principle of all things?
