Songs of the Righteous Spirit: “Men of High Purpose” and Their ...

134 MATTHEW FRALEIGHstubbornly refused. Even after being transported to Northern China inthe following year, he would not submit. To document his ordeal, WenTianxiang had been keeping two extensive poetic journals. The secondof these contains what is perhaps his most famous work, a sixty-linepoem he wrote in 1281 called “Zhengqige” 正 氣 歌 (Song of the righteousspirit). In the preface he reveals how he was able to overcome hisbleak situation by faith in the “righteous spirit.”Wen Tianxiang’s patriotic actions and his poetry of resistance hadbeen popularized in Japan by the scholar Asami Keisai 淺 見 綗 齋 (1652–1711), whose Seiken igen (Testaments of selfless sacrifices) included adetailed biography of Wen Tianxiang, as well as a thorough annotationand commentary on his “Song of the Righteous Spirit.” Writtenas an ethical guidebook, Keisai’s text comprised eight chapters, eachof which extolled the valorous deeds and resolute loyalty of an individualChinese figure from pre-Qin times down through the Ming,and was widely used as a textbook.54 Wen Tianxiang was an importantinfluence on many Japanese shishi, who referred in their own compositionsto his inspiring example. Frequently such literary homage tookthe form of an implicit comparison between the Japanese poet’s confinementand Wen Tianxiang’s own tribulations, as in the followingexample from Taka sugi Shinsaku, another poem that he wrote whileincarcerated:囚 中 作Composed in prison囚 室 無 苦 爲 In this prison cell, I do not want for things to do;披 書 養 良 知 I can open a book and cultivate my “goodknowledge.”虛 心 而 平 氣 I empty my mind and relax my spirits;書 中 自 有 師 The book itself becomes my teacher.5 讀 至 南 宋 滅 When I read to where the Southern Song collapsed,獨 悲 天 祥 節 In my solitude I was struck by Tianxiang’s integrity.臨 死 衣 帶 銘 When he faced his death, his sash held a document54Asami Keisai later wrote a series of lectures on the text that are known as Seikenigen kōgi 靖 獻 遺 言 講 義 , which covered, in addition to Wen Tianxiang, Qu Yuan, ZhugeLiang, Tao Qian, Yan Zhenqing, Xie Fangde, Liu Yin, and Fang Xiaoru. The work waspopular among and important to the shishi, inspiring, for example, Yoshida Shōin’s 1854series of “Eight Historical Poems”; see Yamaguchi-ken Kyōiku Iinkai 山 口 縣 教 育 會 , ed.,Yoshida Shōin zenshū 吉 田 松 陰 全 集 (Iwanami Shoten, 1934–36), 7:43–52.