SOURCE: Brower, Robert H. Introduction to Fujiwara Teika's ‘Hundred-Poem Sequence of the Shoji Era,’ 1200, translated by Robert H. Brower, pp. 1-32. Tokyo: Sophia University, 1978.

In the following excerpt from his introduction to his translation of Teika's Shoji hyakushu, Brower examines the historical background and content of this varied and influential hundred-poem sequence.

Foreword

The great Japanese classical poet and critic Fujiwara no Sadaie, or Teika (1162-1241), is best known to popular history for his little anthology of thirty-one-syllable poems called Hyakunin isshu, ‘One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets’. Even today, this collection is memorized by most cultured Japanese, if only because a literary card game played during the New Year season is based upon it. More important, the Hyakunin isshu has for the past three hundred years and more been the chief vehicle by which the Japanese have come to learn something of their native tradition of...