In Japan, gift-giving (omiyagé お土産) among friends and relatives is a common tradition, and recently a friend returned from Japan and gave us some special crackers (senbei) featuring poems from the Hyakunin Isshu. The crackers come in different flavors, and the wrapper each has a random poem.
I got a curry-flavored one:
The first two verses of the poem, poem 99, are written on the front. On the back are the remaining verses:
Hyakunin Isshu-themed crackers are sold here and there, and I’ve posted about it in the past, but it’s still nice to get them from time to time.
P.S. This vendor sells Hyakunin Isshu themed senbei crackers as well (it was the vendor featured in the original post).
Since initially making this blog way back in 2011, I have learned that you can now find karuta competitions (競技かるた kyōgi karuta) online on the official Youtube channel!
Here’s a recent high school playoff competition in 2022 for men:
and ladies playoff competition:
As you can see, it’s a very formal, elegant affair, with traditional clothing, customs, etc. Good manners and sportsmanship are emphasized.
Hyakunin Isshu karuta sets, such as those used in games and competitions, are always divided by two sets of cards:
yomifuda (読み札) cards, illustrated cards with entire poem on them, and
torifuda (取り札) cards that only contain the last only the last 2 verses. Illustrations below.
The yomifuda card for poem 58, with the last two verses circled in blue. These correspond to the matching torifuda card on the right.
The matching torifuda card with the last two verses. Torifuda cards are always written in simple hiragana script for easy reading.
I admit that I am still learning the rules, but the gist is that 50 of the 100 total torifuda cards are laid out in a set pattern of cards on the floor, half (25) of them on one player’s side, the other half (25) with the other player.
A diagram of the play field that I made using LibreOffice
The yomité (読手, “reciter”) reads a randomly select poem in full using the illustrated yomifuda cards above.
The yomifuda card for poem 58, from my wife’s karuta set.
The players have to wait until the first 3 verses are completed, then if the matching torifuda cards on the field (i.e. the last 2 verses of the poem), the players can try to take that card. Whoever touches it first wins that round, and the card is taken off the field. Usually, players will swat the card aside because it’s just faster and keeps the other player from touching it.
If the card had been on the opponent’s side (相手陣, aitejin), then not only is the card taken off the field, but you also select a card from your side (自陣, jijin), and send it over to their side. Usually the players will raise their hand to pause the match while they decide which card to send over. The end result is that the cards on your side are reduced by 1, the opponent’s remain unchanged. If the card you took was on your side, then your side is reduced by 1 anyway. No transfer needed. When watching the videos, the player will the lower number of cards is winning.
Side note, if the matching torifuda card was not on the board anyway, then it’s considered karafuda (空札, “empty card”), and the game moves onto the next round.
The player who removes all cards from their side is the winner.
Anyhow, it’s pretty interesting to watch, even if the competitions can take an hour or more. You can see how explosively fast the players are.
Finally, I’d like to give a shout out to groups such as the Boston Karuta Club and Seattle Karuta Club. They have plenty of helpful links in English on getting started with karuta, rules and training resources, among many other great resources!
I started this blog as far back as 2011, and it was only today that I noticed that the blog template is super old and doesn’t work well with WordPress features anymore. Further, a number of images and links are broken. Such is life on the Information Superhighway.
I am working on updating the blog layout and fixing broken links. It won’t look 100% like the old blog, but life is ephemeral anyway…
Thanks for your support, and I hope you like the updates!
Hello readers! It’s been a while (almost 10 years in fact) since I last posted to this blog. My interest in the Hyakunin Isshu has not diminished during that time, but I had reached the end of the initial project, and then focused on other things at the time. Now, things have somewhat come full-circle and if you are still here, I hope you enjoy these new posts.
Lately, I have been playing a great Nintendo game called Splatoon 2, a fun, futuristic game involving sea life that has evolved long after humans are gone, and is also a satire on Japanese culture.
During the main story quest, players can pick up special journey entries that provide a window into the life of Inklings and Inkopolis city, and I was surprised by this entry, shown above.
Look familiar? These are karuta cards from the Hyakunin Isshu anthology, but featuring Splatoon characters instead! The text alludes to a karuta game tournament, just like those that take place in Japan.
I always enjoy it when subtle elements of Japanese culture make their way into popular games.1
If you own a Switch, but haven’t played Splatoon 2 yet, definitely pick it up and see if you can find this journal entry too. 🦑
The small town of Yoshino (吉野, official site), near the old capitol of Nara, was a popular spot since ancient times and was often the subject of poetry in the Hyakunin Isshu anthology, for example poem 31 and poem 94. Further, according to the old Japanese historical account, the Nihon Shoki, visits to Yoshino to view the cherry blossoms went as far back as Empress Jitō (poem 2) and became a tradition ever since.
There is also a famous love story that takes place between the celebrated 12th century warrior Minamoto no Yoshitsune, and his mistress Shizuka Gozen. It was said that winter, while fleeing his jealous older brother, on the way to Oshu province in the north, they had to separate for her safety. In the snows of Yoshino, they parted, and Shizuka was sad to watch her beloved disappear in the snow.
Last spring, the Yasaka Taxi company in Japan posted a terrific photo of Yoshino (original link on Twitter):
Even to this day, cherry blossom viewing at Yoshino is a major tourism destination, and from what I hear, it’s pretty amazing.
Wow, it’s been a while. Recently, while playing with my wife and kids a game of karuta with our Hyakunin Isshu set, I learned about a simple, introductory way to enjoy the game without spending a lot of time learning the poems or mastering the rules of the competition. This simple game is called bōzu-mekuri (坊主めくり).
A recent game (Jan 2023) of bozu mekuri my family and I played on a Saturday night. We use the two-pile yamafuda setup (almost depleted now). The discarded cards are in the middle, with the remaining yamafuda on either side. My cards are in the foreground.
The rules are nicely explained here in Japanese, but goes like this:
Two or more people sit around in a circle.
Shuffle all 100 of the picture cards (yomifuda), then make a stack face-down. This stack is called the yamafuda (lit. “card mountain”).
Alternatively, you can split the stack into two stacks, three stacks, or even a ring of cards. My family plays with two stacks as shown above.
No matter how you deal the cards, they need to be face down.
Players take turns drawing one card from any yamafuda stack.
Depending on what kind of card a person gets, one of three things will happen:
If the card is a picture of a nobleman (tono), simply add it to your personal pile.
If the card is a picture of a Buddhist monk (bōzu), you lose all your cards. Put your cards into a pile somewhere in the middle, near the original yamafuda stack, but face up. If there are cards already there, just add to the pile.
If the card is a court lady (himé) then you get all the cards from the face-up pile.
Once done, pass the turn to the next player.
When all the yamafuda cards are exhausted, whoever has the most cards at the end wins the game.
One quick note: the poet Semimaru (poem 10) looks like a monk card, but the poet wasn’t a monk. This leads to a frequent confusion by players: does Semimaru count as a monk, or as a nobleman, or … something else? This actually did come up in a recent game I played with friends: we couldn’t figure how if he was tono or bōzu and apparently many Japanese people have been stumped by this.
The Hyakunin Isshu Daijiiten, which I mentioned here, considers Semimaru a bōzu (monk) for the purposes of the game, even though he wasn’t actually an ordained monk.
However, my other new book jokes that the author has a house-rule whereby if anyone draws the Semimaru card, then everyone loses their cards.
You can treat Semimaru the way you treat a Joker in poker cards: decide ahead of time what it means, and play accordingly.
Anyhow, once you get a set of hyakunin isshu karuta cards, try it out with your friends some time! I found the game very easy to learn, and fun to play with 3-4 people. More people the better. There are lots of house-rules possible in bozu-mekuri, so feel free to choose rules that you and the other players enjoy.
This is Mount Ogura (小倉山) also called Arashiyama (嵐山) near the city of Kyoto. The place name “Ogura” is where the Hyakunin Isshu gets its full-name: Ogura Hyakunin Isshu.
At that time, it was trendy for aristocrats to compile their own “hundred poems by a hundred poets” anthologies, all named “hyakunin isshu”, but the one that is by far the most famous is the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu, which of course is the source and inspiration of this blog. 🙂
Thanks to KyotoDailyPhoto on Twitter for taking this photo. It’s nice to see the place that inspired the anthology.
This poem was composed by Supernumerary Middle Counselor Sada’ie (権中納言定家, 1162-1241), better known as Fujiwara no Teika, or alternatively Fujiwara no Sadaie.1 He is considered one of the greatest poets in all of Japanese history. Teika was the compiler of this Hyakunin Isshu anthology and was also one of the major compilers of the officialShin Kokin Wakashū anthology. He was also the tutor for Shokushi Naishinno (poem 89), and it is thought that they had a romantic relationship too, though eventually they would be separated for good. In any case, his talent and his family’s influence were so great that the family virtually monopolized the Court poetry for centuries to come. But we’ll talk more about that shortly.
Fujiwara no Teika composed many of his own poems in his lifetime, and yet in compiling the Hyakunin Isshu, why did he select this particular poem for inclusion?
Like many of the later poems in the anthology (poem 90, 91 and 94), this poem alludes to a much older one. In Teika’s case, his poem alludes all the way back to the original anthology in Japan, the Manyoshu. Unlike later anthologies, the Manyoshu was a loose connection of poems, compiled 400+ years before Teika, and the particular poem he alludes to was written from the perspective of a man whose love was burning for a woman like the boiling of seaweed at Matsuo Bay. As you can see, Teika reversed the perspective to be that of a woman, while still alluding to the original. Additionally, Teika gives his poem a sadder tone than the poem from the Manyoshu, which came to be a hallmark of Teika’s style.
Incidentally, Matsuo Bay (written as Matsuho 松帆 here) is on the very northern tip of the famous Awaji Island in the Inland Sea. It is a scenic part of Awaji Island, and even has its own homepage. Awaji Island is also the scene for poem 78. The technique of extracting salt by boiling seaweed, or moshio (藻塩) is a time-honored tradition in Japan, and the seaweed gives the salt a special flavor. There’s a really good article about it here.
Fujiwara no Teika was a master of expressing yūgen (幽玄) or subtle, profound beauty in his poetry. This kind of subtle beauty centuries later came to influence other arts in time in Japan including Noh theater, tea-ceremony, etc.
But who was Fujiwara no Teika?
Teika, alternatively read as Sada’ie, was born from an illustrious family of poets though a minor branch of the powerful Fujiwara clan. His grandfather was Fujiwara no Toshitada and his father was Shunzei (poem 83). As a youth, Teika was a sickly boy but as the eldest son, he was obligated to carry on the family legacy. Unfortunately due to complex court politics, Teika was overlooked for much of his early life. However after a fortunate turn of events, he was noticed by Emperor Go-Toba (poem 99) who eventually commissioned him to compile two new anthologies, including the Shin Kokin Wakashū.
Over time though, Teika and Emperor Gotoba disagreed over poetry and compiling the anthology, leading to an increasingly distant and cold relationship. Teika found Gotoba overbearing, while Gotoba didn’t care for Teika’s free-wheeling style. At times, Teika and Gotoba openly criticized one another through poetry, or in their diary entries, and Gotoba even banished Teika for a year from the capitol. Teika meanwhile grew closer to Gotoba’s son who later became Emperor Juntoku (poem 100), while Gotoba became increasingly occupied with the martial arts, and with wresting power back from the samurai rulers in Kamakura (cf. poem 93)
Unfortunately for Emperor Gotoba, his meager forces were utterly routed by the Kamakura army in the short-lived Jōkyū War, and Gotoba was sent into exile (since it was sacrilege to kill the Emperor). Teika was not involved in the war, so he remained in Kyoto, and even reached the Imperial post of Middle Counselor. During this time, he also completed another Imperial anthology, the Shin Chokusen Wakashū, which shows more of his down-to-earth later style.
Finally though, his health declined from old age and from the famine at the time, so he retired and took Buddhist tonsure. It was during his final years in a Buddhist monastery that he was invited by his son’s father-in-law, Lord Utsunomiya no Yoritsuna, to his villa at Mount Ogura near Kyoto.
This stone marker at Jojakko-ji Temple in west Kyoto, near Arashiyama, marks where Teika had compiled the Hyakunin Isshu. More on that in this post. Photo taken in August 2024.
Lord Utsunomiya asked Teika to compile 100 poems in his own hand, so that they could be adorned on the silk screens of his villa, and these 100 eventually became the collection that we know today.
After Teika died at the age of 80, he was interred at Shokoku-ji Temple in Kyoto. The featured photo above shows his grave marker (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.). His grandchildren formed into three rival schools of Waka poetry that dominated the poetry scene for centuries:
Nijō School (nijō-ha 二条派) – the conservative and dominant school at first. Over time, a series of misfortunes eventually caused the school to decline and fade by the medieval period in Japanese history.
Reizei School (reizei-ke 冷泉家) – the more liberal branch, but a few generations later became the dominant branch. By the middle of the Muromachi Period, two branches had formed: the upper Reizei school (kamireizei 上冷泉家) and the lower Reizei school (shimoreizei 下冷泉家), which the upper school prevailing in the long-run. This school still maintains a large compound in Kyoto to this day.
Kyōgoku School (kyōgoku-ha 京極派) – this school died out in only a couple generations.
But more importantly, the legacy of Fujiwara no Teika is in his celebrated poetry anthologies, particularly this one. Even today, many kids in Japan enjoy playinguta-garuta in school competitions, and there are even Japanese anime about the Hyakunin Isshu. All of this is due to Teika’s talent and taste for selecting good poetry.
And now, this anthology is enjoyed by international readers like yourself. This blog was a originally a little experiment of mine, but I have enjoyed your readership, your comments, and of course your support. Thank you everyone from the bottom of my heart.
As this is the 100th and final poem of the Hyakunin Isshu, that is all I have to offer on this blog. I may take it up again sometime in the future and cover other anthologies like the Kokinshu and the Shinkokinshu, but for now, I decided that I prefer to leave it as it is.
1 The Chinese characters (kanji) for his given name (定家) have multiple readings possible, and both are seemingly correct. However, based on a cursory glance in Japanese, it seems that “Teika” is the more common reading.
The author, Nyūdō Saki no Daijōdaijin (入道前太政大臣, 1171 – 1244), or “Buddhist novice and former Chancellor of the Realm”. His personal name was Fujiwara no Kintsune. He was a powerful member of the elite Fujiwara clan and extended his support to the Hyakunin Isshu’s compiler, Fujiwara no Teika (poem 97), after Teika married Kintsune’s older sister. He was also well-liked by members of the old Imperial Court and the new military government at Kamakura.
According to Mostow, Kintsune married a niece of Minamoto no Yoritomo, the first shogun of the new military government. After Yoritomo’s son Sanetomo (poem 93) died a tragic death with no heir, Kintsune pushed to make his grandson Kujō Yoritsune, a distant relation to Sanetomo, the next shogun. My new book states that his reputation worsens in his later years as he kept manipulating the power of shoguns from behind the throne.
It also implies that Kintsune may have helped tip off the new military government about Emperor Gotoba’s (poem 99) plans to wrest back control, helping to contribute to the demise of the Emperor and his son (poem 100).
Ah, times had changed since the earlier generations of the Hyakunin Isshu mostly worried about poetry contests and marriage arrangements.
But I digress.
This poem, unlike other poems recently posted which were more clear-cut in meaning, often was the subject of much interpretation. The contrast between the aging man and the scattering of flowers in the wind, called hana fubuki (花吹雪) led to many interpretations by later commentators particularly about the man growing old, according to Professor Mostow. Perhaps he won’t be back next year?
The image of hana fubuki also is noteworthy, because it isn’t a small scattering of flowers. It refers to great scattering of blossoms in the wind, just like a snowfall. Thus Kintsune is witnessing this great scattering even as he contemplates his own decline even after so many years in power.
Pretty awesome poem, really, for a man who lived a noteworthy life.
Speaking of scenic views, Kintsune’s residence of Saionji (西園寺), which was also established as his clan’s new name (Saionji), later became the famous Golden Pavilion.
Taken by me in July 2023
Indeed Kintsune’s contribution to Japanese culture and history, dubious as it may be, can be felt even today.
The author, Sangi Masatsune (参議雅経, “Counselor Masatsune”, 1170-1221), also as known as Fujiwara no Masatsune, was another editor of the Shin Kokin Wakashū like Yoshitsune (poem 91) and went on to found the poetic house of Asukai (also famous for calligraphy). He also studied under Shunzei (poem 83) earlier in his career.
I had to look up what fulling cloth meant, but apparently it’s the process of beating cloth, especially wool, to improve the texture, or in the case of Japan, give the cloth a nice glossy sheen. You can see an example of this above, in a painting made in the 1800’s, almost 700 years later. I can’t imagine the process changed much within that time. The process was to place the cloth on a wood or stone surface and pound it with a wooden mallet. In Japanese, the process called koromo utsu (衣打つ) just as it is mentioned in this poem.
Also, this poem, like other poems we’ve looked at recently (poem 90 and poem 91), alludes to a much older poem by Korenori (poem 31), which also mentions snow in the village of Yoshino (yoshino-chō, 吉野町), near the old capitol of Nara.
Interestingly, the “former capitol” is referred to by the poetic phrase furusato, which in modern Japanese means one’s hometown. Nara was the capitol of Japan during the early Nara Period, and personally my most favorite place to visit in Japan. The culture at that time was an interesting fusion of early Japanese culture, Chinese art and culture, and Indian Buddhism (via Silk Road). Even after the capitol was moved to Kyoto (another great place), there existed many euphemisms to the “former capitol” by later poets and authors (poem 61, for example) as a kind of nostalgia or the “good ol’ days”. Hence the use of the term furusato I believe.
P.S. Featured photo is Surimono, Woman Fulling Cloth in the Moonlight, by Shigenobu, Brooklyn Museum, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons
The Hyakunin Isshu 
