The origins of Jha are almost as obscure as those of the earlier renga master, Sgi. Records agree that he was born in Nara and that his family was of meager social standing, perhaps from the merchant class. That he lost his father at the age of twelve and went to work as a menial in a temple associated with Kfukuji, the most important of all Nara temples, is a contention treated as fact in many accounts, though supporting evidence is scarce. The most that can be said with confidence about his youth is that he spent it in Nara, where there was an active literary community that seems to have attracted him from an early age. A statement of his own from later in life says that he chose linked verse as his profession because it offered the possibility of worldly success even to someone of low...