One Hundred Poems from Old Japan
A New Translation of the Hyakunin Isshu
In early thirteenth-century Japan, calligrapher Fujiwara no Teika chose one hundred poems of solitude, nature, aging, loneliness, beauty, and desire from one hundred poets of the previous five centuries—Hyakunin Isshu—a collection representing the pinnacle work of the majestic Heian period. Poetry during that half millennium was a compulsory craft of high society for women and men. Even today, these one hundred poems play a foundational role in Japan’s educational system.
As an undergraduate at the University of San Francisco in 1977, Michael Freiling won a Luce Scholarship allowing him to study Japanese literature for a year in Kyoto. His work on this translation of Hyakunin Isshu began all those years ago.
Lady Izumi Shikibu
Though to a better world
I may indeed be passing,
some memories I wish to take along—just one more time, I beg you,
come to me tonight.
Reviewed by
Matt Sutherland
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