Ki no Tsurayuki
Japanese author, poet and courtier
872 CE to 945 CE
Ki no Tsurayuki (872 – June 30, 945) is a Japanese author, poet and courtier of the Heian period.
He is best known as the principal compiler of the Kokin Wakashū and as the author of the Tosa Diary (although the latter is published anonymously).
World
The Far East
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Four Japanese court poets had been selected to compile the Kokin Wakashū, an anthology of poetry in the classical thirty-one- syllable “waka” form.
The Kokin Wakashū ("Collection of Japanese Poems of Ancient and Modern Times"), commonly abbreviated as Kokinshū, is an Imperial anthology, conceived of by Emperor Uda, who reigned from 887 to 897, and published by order of his son Emperor Daigo, who will reign from 897 to 930, in approximately 905.
Its finished form dates to around 920, though according to several historical accounts the last poem was added to the collection in 914.
The compilers of the anthology are led by Ki no Tsurayuki and also including Ki no Tomonori (who died before its completion), Ōshikōchi Mitsune, and Mibu no Tadamine.
The Japanese government dispatches Sumitomo, of the Fujiwara family, west in 936 to subdue the pirates that have long menaced commerce on the Inland Sea.
Succeeding in this, he and his followers now commence to plunder the western provinces themselves in defiance of imperial orders.
The Japanese courtier-poet Ki no Tsurayaki returns to Kyoto from Tosa province, where he had been the provincial governor, a journey that becomes the basis of the earliest surviving Japanese poetic diary, the Tosa nikki.
Tsurayaki maintains the pose of being a woman write in producing The Tosa Diary in 936.