Woodblock Prints of Ogura Hyakunin Isshu
By clicking on the number of any poem in the text pages of this Web edition, you will
call up the corresponding woodblock print of the poem in Onna Kotobuki Ogura Shikishi
(Osaka: Keio II, 1867). This is a Meiji-era edition of the Hyakunin poems designed for women,
with various useful cultural material, Genji seals, origami directions, poetry, and notes on
morals and etiquette. We include these images with this edition not only as a delightful version
of the 100 poems and cultural artifact from the nineteenth century, but also because of the portraits
of the poets. These somewhat rough-hewn woodblock prints from the latter days of the ukiyo-e age
show the 100 poets in typical icongraphy. The same configurations appear and re-appear in
illustrations in books and on playing cards of the Hyakunin Isshu. To see these
woodblock prints, click on a poem number in the text that requires Japanese
client software or in the text that does not require Japanese software.
Earlier ukiyo-e artists dedicated some of their finest efforts to the Hyakunin poems and poets.
Outstanding among these was Hokusai's incomplete set of illustrations of the poems,
reproduced in Peter Morse, Hokusai: One Hundred Poets (New York: Braziller, 1989).
With this edition of the Hyakunin Isshu we reproduce Hokusai's print for poem number
4, "Yamabe no Akahito" (75K bytes). (See
Sources for the citation of the original print in the Honolulu Academy of Arts.)
Another series is by Kuniyoshi. The most aristocratic of ukiyo-e artists, Eishi, did a woodblock
print illustrating the famous Hyakunin poem by Ono no Komachi..
Return to Ogura Hyakunin Isshu contents.