Fujiwara no Kinto
Encyclopedia

, also known as Shijō-dainagon, was a Japanese
Japanese people
The are an ethnic group originating in the Japanese archipelago and are the predominant ethnic group of Japan. Worldwide, approximately 130 million people are of Japanese descent; of these, approximately 127 million are residents of Japan. People of Japanese ancestry who live in other countries...

 poet
Japanese poetry
Japanese poets first encountered Chinese poetry during the Tang Dynasty. It took them several hundred years to digest the foreign impact, make it a part of their culture and merge it with their literary tradition in their mother tongue, and begin to develop the diversity of their native poetry. For...

, admired by his contemporaries and a court bureaucrat of the Heian period
Heian period
The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. The period is named after the capital city of Heian-kyō, or modern Kyōto. It is the period in Japanese history when Buddhism, Taoism and other Chinese influences were at their height...

. His father was the regent Fujiwara no Yoritada
Fujiwara no Yoritada
Fujiwara no Yoritada , the second son of Saneyori, was a kugyo who served as regent for Emperor En'yū and Emperor Kazan. His mother was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tokihira. His elder brother from the same mother Atsutoshi died before father's death...

 and his son Fujiwara no Sadayori. An exemplary calligrapher and poet, he is given mention in works by Murasaki Shikibu
Murasaki Shikibu
Murasaki Shikibu was a Japanese novelist, poet and lady-in-waiting at the Imperial court during the Heian period. She is best known as the author of The Tale of Genji, written in Japanese between about 1000 and 1012...

, Sei Shōnagon
Sei Shonagon
Sei Shōnagon , was a Japanese author and a court lady who served the Empress Teishi around the year 1000 during the middle Heian period. She is best known as the author of The Pillow Book .-Name:...

 and a number of other major chronicles and texts.

Biography

Over the course of his life, Kintō published a great many poems, as well as many poetry anthologies including the Shūi Wakashū and the Wakan rōeishū
Wakan roeishu
The is an anthology of Chinese poems and 31-syllable Japanese waka for singing to fixed melodies .Compiled by Fujiwara no Kintō ca...

. He also established the grouping of "Thirty-Six Poetic Geniuses" or "Thirty-six Poetry Immortals
Thirty-six Poetry Immortals
The Thirty-six Poetry Immortals are a group of Japanese poets of the Nara, Asuka and Heian periods selected by Fujiwara no Kintō as exemplars of Japanese poetic ability. There are five female poets among them...

", the "Anthology of Poems by the Thirty-Six Poets" (Sanjūrokkasen), frequently seen in Ukiyo-e
Ukiyo-e
' is a genre of Japanese woodblock prints and paintings produced between the 17th and the 20th centuries, featuring motifs of landscapes, tales from history, the theatre, and pleasure quarters...

 art; he first assembled in 1009–1011 which Fujiwara no Teika
Fujiwara no Teika
Fujiwara no Teika , also known as Fujiwara no Sadaie or Sada-ie, was a Japanese poet, critic, calligrapher, novelist, anthologist, scribe, and scholar of the late Heian and early Kamakura periods...

 would later recommend to the study to aspiring poets. The anthology:
"...contained ten poems each by Hitomaro, Tsurayuki, Mitsune, Ise, Kanemori, and Nakatsukasa, and three poems each by Yakamochi, Akahito, Narihira, Henjô, Sosei, Tomonori, Sarumaru, Komachi, Kanesuke, Asatada, Atsutada, Takamitsu, Kintada, Tadamine, Saigû no Nyôgo, Yorimoto, Toshiyuki, Shigeyuki, Muneyuki, Sane-akira, Kiyotada, Shitagô, Okikaze, Motosuke, Korenori, Motozane, Kodai no Kimi (also read O-ô no Kimi), Nakafumi, Yoshinobu, and Tadami. He served the Heian court in the position of nagon at the same time as Minamoto no Tsunenobu, Minamoto no Toshikata, and Fujiwara no Yukinari
Fujiwara no Yukinari
was a Japanese calligrapher during the Heian period. He was memorialized for his prowess in his chosen art by being remembered as one of the outstanding Three Brush Traces , along with Ono no Michikaze and Fujiwara no Sukemasa.-Life:...

, all great poets as well. The four have come to be known as the
Shi-nagon (four nagon)." http://spectacle.berkeley.edu/~fiorillo/texts/topictexts/artist_varia_topics/poetry_defs7.html


He was also apparently vital in the compilation of Emperor Kazan
Emperor Kazan
was the 65th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.Kazan's reign spanned the years from 984 through 986.-Traditional narrative:...

's Shūi Wakashū (in which 15 of his poems appear), having compiled between 996 and 999 the original skeleton for it, a collection called Shuisho.

In addition, his poetry criticism is also of note: reputedly, when Kinto criticized Fujiwara no Nagayoshi
Fujiwara no Nagayoshi
, also known as Nagayoshi, was a Japanese poet and a court bureaucrat of the Heian period. He was the son of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. His sister was the mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna. She was a writer of the famous diary, Kagerō Nikki . His another sister was a mother of Sugawara no Takasue no...

(probably his Waka Kuhon, "Nine Grades of Waka" ), Nagayoshi became ill and died.

External links

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