"Shirou, Shirou, help me take a picture with Bai Juyi." Utaha Kasumigaoka grabbed the boy's arm and stuffed a mirrorless camera into Shirou's hands.
Then she ran over to the roughly two-meter-tall stone statue and called out impatiently. Bai Juyi was her favorite poet, after all. She admired and loved him deeply, believing he was no less brilliant than Li Bai, and felt sorry for him.
"Sure, sure." Shirou helplessly took out his phone and agreed. This senpai was not only obsessed with Mount Lu, but also obsessed with Bai Juyi. Still, compared to her usual sharp-tongued self, she was much cuter like this.
Holding the camera, Shirou captured the adorably silly sight of the headband-wearing senpai hugging the statue.
Mm... the camera has Wi-Fi. It might be fun to send this to Eriri.
Li Bai was the free-spirited Poet Immortal, while Du Fu was the Poet Sage who worried for his country and its people, wishing to shelter all poor scholars beneath a roof. Yet ever since Tang poetry had been introduced to Japan in ancient times, Bai Juyi had been sought after by everyone from the Emperor down to the nobility. For a long time, they had loved and favored Bai Letian. They collected Bai Juyi's works and bound them into Collections of Bai's Works, held lectures and poetry gatherings, and princes and ministers alike imitated Bai's style in their own poems.
On one hand, Bai Juyi's poetry was plain, accessible, and easy to understand—written so even white-haired old women could comprehend it.
On the other hand, his poems embodied the idea of accepting one's fate and finding peace in contentment. This suited the Emperors and nobles of Kyoto during the Heian period, who had lost real power and had no powerful figures capable of reclaiming land from