What is the Hyakunin Isshu woodblock print series?
The phrase Hyakunin isshu can be translated into English as ‘One hundred poems from one hundred poets’, and is the name of a very famous collection made up of poems written between the 7th and 13th centuries. All Japanese know of it, and any reasonably well-educated Japanese knows many of the poems by heart. It is a very important part of Japanese literary culture, and it is far from unusual to meet people who have memorized the complete collection. Although the ‘Hyakunin Isshu’ was created as a purely literary endeavour, in recent centuries it has also become strongly connected with a game of cards (karuta) based on the poems. Two sets of 100 small cards are used to play this game. One set contains the complete poems, and is used by a reader who chants each poem while the players scramble to be the first to locate the matching card, which contains just the last portion of the poem. (A few years back I was commissioned by a publisher to write a magazine article on the history of karuta
