Ōshikōchi no Mitsune was an early Heian

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...

 administrator and waka

Waka (poetry)

Waka or Yamato uta is a genre of classical Japanese verse and one of the major genres of Japanese literature...

poet of the Japanese court (859–925), and a member of the 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...

. He was sent as the governor of Kai

Kai Province

, also known as , is an old province in Japan in the area of Yamanashi Prefecture. It lies in central Honshū, west of Tokyo, in a landlocked mountainous region that includes Mount Fuji along its border with Shizuoka Prefecture....

, Izumi

Izumi Province

was a province of Japan. It is also referred to as . It lay in Kinai, and its area today composes the south-western part of Osaka Prefecture . The Ōshōji in Sakai was the border with Settsu Province, until the beginning of the Meiji period, when the boundary was changed to be at the Yamato River...

 and Awaji province

Awaji Province

was an old province of Japan covering Awaji Island, between Honshū and Shikoku. Today it is part of Hyōgo Prefecture. It is sometimes called . Awaji is divided into three municipal sections: Awaji is the northernmost section, Sumoto is the most urban and central section, and four southern towns...

s, and on his return to Kyoto

Kyoto

is a city in the central part of the island of Honshū, Japan. It has a population close to 1.5 million. Formerly the imperial capital of Japan, it is now the capital of Kyoto Prefecture, as well as a major part of the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto metropolitan area.-History:...

 was asked to participate in the compilation of the Kokin Wakashū. He was a master of poetic matches and his poems to accompany pictures on folding screens were widely admired for their quality. His influence at the time was commensurate with Ki no Tsurayuki

Ki no Tsurayuki

was a Japanese author, poet and courtier of the Heian period.Tsurayuki was a son of Ki no Mochiyuki. He became a waka poet in the 890s. In 905, under the order of Emperor Daigo, he was one of four poets selected to compile the Kokin Wakashū, an anthology of poetry.After holding a few offices in...

, and he has an unusually large number of poems (193) included in the official poetry collections.

He is known to many Japanese today as one of his poems was included in the famous anthology Hyakunin Isshu

Hyakunin Isshu

is a traditional anthology style of compiling Japanese waka poetry where each contributor writes one poem for the anthology. Literally, it translates to "one hundred people, one poem [each]"...

.

External links

• E-text of his poems in Japanese