Abstract:
In Meiji Period, as Japan leaping from Asia to Europe, Chinese Poetry was deserted and negated, whilst American and European Poetry Style was introduced to Japan instead. Under such an environment, OnoKozan kept his transcription and printing works of Qing Poetry as usual and insisted on creating Chinese poems.
The Poems of Plum Blossom in Fragrance Garden is one of his printed works of Qing Poetry. This poetry anthology was written by Lin Tan who lived in central Fujian in Qing Dynasty, annotated by Cheng Yuanfu and postscripts added by Wang Dengying. As a result of textual research, in 1721 spring, after finishing official works as a Thanksgiving Ambassador in Beijing, Ryukyu poet Cheng Shunze left to Fujian and stayed till June. During the stay, through Cheng Yuanfu and Wang Dengying's introduction, Cheng Shunze read this anthology and then decided to fund to print it. Few years later after being printed, this anthology had been handed down to Japan and be reprinted. The existing earliest edition of
The Poems of Plum Blossom in Fragrance Garden is Japanese block-printed one in 1725. But it did not attract any attention among Japanese poets in that time until 1855. A lot of block-printed types appeared, and OnoKozan also printed this poetry anthology in the same year to express his poetic theory.