The collection Ogura Hyakunin Isshu has been compiled around year 1230 by Fujiwara no Sadaie. It’s a collection of 100 waka poems, a genre that is considered a predecessor to the famous haiku. Here we can enjoy them in the translation and broad commentary by Peter MacMillan.
The anthology also contains the romanisation of the poems (even if you do not read Japanese, you can read the aloud and hear the melody), and a map of popular places that appear in the poems. The poems themselves are popular until today, partly thanks to the karuta card game, where two opponents need to find the second part of the poems among the verses laid out on the cards before them, while a person reads aloud the opening lines.
Yasushi Yokoiyama’s portraits of the authors add to the book’s overall charm.
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