A Hundred Verses from Old Japan

The Hyaku-nin-isshiu (literally one hundred poems by one hundred poets ) is a collection of a hundred evocative and intensely human specimens of Japanese tanka (poetry written in a five-line thirty-one syllable format in a 5-7-5-7-7 pattern) composed between the seventh and thirteenth centuries and compiled by Sadaiye Fujiwara in 1235. There are obvious Buddhist and Shinto influences throughout. To make the sounds more familiar to English readers, the translator has adopted a five-line verse of 8-6-8-6-6 meter, with the second, fourth, and fifth lines rhyming. His accompanying notes put the poems into a cultural and historical context. Sensitively illustrated with an eighteenth-century Japanese woodcut for each poem.