Japan Navigator

New Year is the time for poetry card games based on the famous poetry collection Hyakunin Isshu or “One hundred poets one poem each.” See my previous article about this subject. I have also written about visits to locations associated with these poems in Kyoto. Here is another poem from the collection, situated in the Kamigamo Shrine, and here a witty reply by Sei Shonagon of Pillow Book fame.

Buy a set of the poem cards on Amazon.co.jp:

Now – in the right season! – my attention was drawn to a charming website dedicated to these poems: One Hundred Poets in One Hundred Poems, which clearly is a labor of love. What I like in particular, is the Hyakunin Google Earth folder, allowing you to see the locations of the poems on the map of Japan. I have left my poem card set this year in the cupboard and am playing around on Google Earth instead.

By the way, there exist many scholarly translations of the Hyakunin Isshu. My favorite book is Pictures of the Heart: The Hyakunin Isshu in Word and Image by Joshua Mostow. Besides translations and analysis, this beautiful book also contains Edo-period illustrations of the poem collection.