Fujiwara Toshinari no Musume (藤原俊成女、but much more commonly called Shunzei's Daughter；also 藤原俊成卿女、皇(太)后宮大夫俊成(卿)女, 越部禅尼), 1171? – 1252?, was a Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese poet

Japanese poetry

Japanese poets first encountered Chinese poetry during the Tang Dynasty. It took them several hundred years to digest the foreign impact, make it a part of their culture and merge it with their literary tradition in their mother tongue, and begin to develop the diversity of their native poetry. For...

; she was probably the greatest female poet of her day, ranked with Princess Shikishi

Shikishi Naishinno

Princess Shikishi was a medieval Japanese poet, who lived during the late Heian and early Kamakura periods. She was the third daughter of Emperor Go-Shirakawa . In 1159, Shikishi, who did not marry, went into service at the Kamo Shrine in Kyoto...

. Her grandfather was the noted poet Fujiwara no Shunzei

Fujiwara no Shunzei

was a noted Japanese poet and nobleman, son of Fujiwara no Toshitada. He was also known as Fujiwara no Toshinari or Shakua ; in his younger days , he gave his name as Akihiro , but in 1167, changed to Shunzei...

, and her even more famous brother, Fujiwara no Teika

Fujiwara no Teika

Fujiwara no Teika , also known as Fujiwara no Sadaie or Sada-ie, was a Japanese poet, critic, calligrapher, novelist, anthologist, scribe, and scholar of the late Heian and early Kamakura periods...

, thought enough of her talents to seek her out for advice and criticism after Shunzei died, although she did not hesitate to castigate him when he completed the Shinchokusen Wakashū, for Teika had turned against his former ideal poetic style of yoen (ethereal beauty) while Shunzei's Daughter had not- thus she found Teika's previous efforts to be markedly inferior, and even according to Donald Keene

Donald Keene

Donald Lawrence Keene is a Japanologist, scholar, teacher, writer, translator and interpreter of Japanese literature and culture. Keene was University Professor Emeritus and Shincho Professor Emeritus of Japanese Literature at Columbia University, where he taught for over fifty years...

, "declared that if it had not been compiled by Teika she would have refused even to take it into her hands." (in a letter sent to Fujiwara no Tameie

Fujiwara no Tameie

was a Japanese poet and compiler of Imperial anthologies of poems.Tameie was the second son of poets Teika and Abutuni; and he was the central figure in a circle of Japanese poets after Jōkyū War in 1221. His three sons were Nijō Tameuji, Kyōgoku Tamenori and Reizei Tamesuke...

, Teika's son). She and others also criticized it for apparently deliberately excluding any of the objectively excellent poems produced by the three Retired Emperors exiled in the aftermath of the Jōkyū War

Jokyu War

', also known as the Jōkyū Disturbance or the Jōkyū Rebellion, was fought in Japan between the forces of Retired Emperor Go-Toba and those of the Hōjō clan, regents of the Kamakura shogunate, whom the retired emperor was trying to overthrow....

. Personal pique may also have played a role, since she saw 29 of her poems selected for the Shinkokinshū while only nine were chosen for the Shin Chokusenshū.

Quote

How can I blame the cherry blossoms

for rejecting this floating world

and drifting away as the wind calls them?

See also

• Mumyōzōshi
  Mumyōzōshi
  is an early 13th century Japanese text. One volume in length, it is the oldest existing Japanese text on literary criticism. The author is unknown.-Composition:...
  
  , a text on literary criticism presumably written by Shunzei's daughter