A Hundred Verses from Old Japan
William Porter's rhymed five-line versions of the Hundred Poems by a Hundred Poets, including Ono no Komachi, Ariwara no Narihira, Izumi Shikibu, Murasaki Shikibu and Teika himself.
What this poem is
Hyakunin Isshu (百人一首) is a classical Japanese anthology of one hundred Japanese waka by one hundred poets. Hyakunin Isshu can be translated to "one hundred people, one poem [each]"; it can also refer to the card game of uta-garuta, which uses a deck composed of cards based on the Hyakunin Isshu.
The most famous and standard version was compiled by Fujiwara no Teika (1162–1241) while he lived in the Ogura district of Kyoto. It is therefore also known as Ogura Hyakunin Isshu (小倉百人一首).
One of Teika's diaries, the Meigetsuki, says that his son Tameie asked him to arrange one hundred poems for Tameie's father-in-law, Utsunomiya Yoritsuna, who was furnishing a residence near Mount Ogura; hence the full name of Ogura Hyakunin Isshu. In order to decorate screens of the residence, Fujiwara no Teika produced the calligraphy poem sheets.
Hishikawa Moronobu (1618–1694) provided woodblock portraits for each of the poets included in the anthology. Katsukawa Shunshō (1726–1793) designed prints for a full-color edition published in 1775.
Adapted from the Wikipedia article “Ogura Hyakunin Isshu” (revision 1349087954), used under CC BY-SA 4.0. Laurel's own notes and measurements are not from Wikipedia.
Measured across the book
Across its 500 lines, 98% of stressed syllables fall on the beat (95% interval 97% to 99%). Alliteration runs at 0.80 times what shuffling the words would give (0.15 observed against 0.19 expected). 11% of the lines have a feminine ending.
Baselines and intervals are described in the methods.
Contents
About this text
Public domain. Text from A Hundred Verses from Old Japan (the Hyaku-nin-isshiu), Internet Archive. Free to read, print, copy and reuse.