JAPANESE POETRY.

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A compilation of poems by the 36 Immortals of Poetry. A selection of waka composed by the early masters of the art, copied by Tokugawa Ienobu (1662-1712), the sixth shogun of the Edo period, onto exquisitely hand-decorated paper. The poems encompass themes of love and loneliness, the beauty of the seasons, and the impermanence of life. Five were written by noblewomen and two by Buddhist priests.Waka is the standard form of high Japanese poetry, with a 5-7-5-7-7 syllable structure and a focus on beauty, nature, and melancholy. The earliest examples were compiled in the Kojiki and the Man'yoshu in the eighth century, but it flourished under the Nara and Heian courts of the ninth and tenth centuries. Over time, waka became one of the great pursuits of noble culture and gave rise to a large number of different forms such as the renga and the haiku.In the first decade of the 11th century, Fujiwara no Kinto assembled a list of 36 poets who he believed were exemplary. The majority were noblemen, such as Fujiwara no Kiyotada, whose poem in this manuscript simultaneously thanks the emperor for installing him as lord of Kii Province while begging to return to the glory of the court:Heavenly winds blow / on the bay of Fukei / where the cranes gather, / why should they not return to / their splendid home in the clouds?Kinto also included five women, the most prominent of whom was Ono no Komachi. Donald Keene wrote, "the intensity of emotion expressed in her poetry not only was without pr

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