Abstract
Matthew Fraleigh examines how 'men of high purpose' (shishi),\r a group of mid-nineteenth-century samurai who embraced nationalist\r causes, wrote poetry to fashion themselves in the image of heroes and\r statesmen of Chinese antiquity. Focusing in particular on their\r creative adaptation and re-envisioning of Wen Tianxiang's 'Song of the\r Righteous Spirit,' Fraleigh analyzes how Fujita Tōko, Yoshida Shōin,\r Takasugi Shinsaku, Saigō Takamori, and others reworked specific\r Chinese allusions and texts, which in turn circulated as an\r intertextual currency among the shishi. Through writings thus enriched\r by a selfreferential intertextuality, shishi forged important social\r and literary connections among themselves. The process of\r naturalization, argues Fraleigh, happened not through the\r de-sinification of the poetic form itself, but rather through the\r exploitation of an expanding discursive sphere that became\r increasingly contemporaneous and localized.