Keien School (桂園派)
Keien School is a school of Waka (Japanese poem) led by Kageki KAGAWA (1768-1843), a poet in the late Edo period. It was also a branch of the Nijo school that was passed on by Sanenari SHIMIZUDANI, a court noble from Tosho-ke (the hereditary lineage of Court nobles occupying relatively high ranks) to the Kagawa family of lower-class nobles.
While KAMO no Mabuchi (1679-1769) and the others emphasized the "Manyoshu" (the oldest anthology of Japanese poetry), Kageki and his group preferred "Kokin Wakashu" (A Collection of Ancient and Modern Japanese Poetry), and their poems were popular mainly in the Kinai region (provinces surrounding Kyoto and Nara). Their style of poetry had respect for simplicity and focused on the rhythm of poetry. Disciples include Takafumi KINOSHITA and Naoyoshi KUMAGAI, to name but a few, and it is said that this school survived to the early Meiji period. It is assumed, however, that this school still existed after the Meiji period.