The Thirty Six Immortals of Poetry

The Thirty-Six Immortals of Poetry, or sanjūrokkasen (三十六歌仙), is a special list of early Japanese poets that were selected by the famous poetry critic, Fujiwara no Kintō (poem 55), as being the finest poets in Japanese antiquity. The list was composed around 1009-1011. This list superseded the original Six Immortals of Poetry from an earlier era, though some poets in that group also appear here.

“The Thirty Six Immortals of Poetry”, Ogata Kōrin (1658-1716), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Wikipedia lists the entire group, but for the purposes of this blog, only the following poets, male and female, the ones that appear in the Hyakunin Isshu (24 in all out of 36) are listed:

Poet	Poem in the Hyakunin Isshu
Kakinomoto no Hitomaro	poem 3
Yamabe no Akahito	poem 4
Sarumaru no Taifu	poem 5
Ōtomo no Yakamochi	poem 6
Ono no Komachi	poem 9
High Priest Henjō	poem 12
Ariwara no Narihira	poem 17
Fujiwara no Toshiyuki	poem 18
Lady Ise	poem 19
Dharma Master (Priest) Sosei	poem 21
Fujiwara no Kanesuke	poem 27
Minamoto no Muneyuki	poem 28
Ōshikōchi no Mitsune	poem 29
Mibu no Tadamine	poem 30
Sakanoue no Korenori	poem 31
Ki no Tomonori	poem 33
Ki no Tsurayuki	poem 35
Taira no Kanemori	poem 40
Mibu no Tadami	poem 41
Kiyohara no Motosuke	poem 42
Fujiwara no Atsutada	poem 43
Fujiwara no Asatada	poem 44
Minamoto no Shigeyuki	poem 48
Ōnakatomi no Yoshinobu	poem 49