Jakuzen

Jakuzen was a 12th century priest of the Buddhist Tendai sect; he resided outside the capital of Kyoto in Ōhara. He left behind three manuscripts of waka poetry; that forty-seven of his poems were published in several imperial poetry anthologies of the late 12th century and later is a mark of how highly they were regarded. One of Jakuzen’s most famous collections is the Hōmon hyakushu (One Hundred Poems of the Dharma Gate). As the first one-hundred-poem private anthology of shakkyō-ka (Buddhist-themed poems), Jakuzen’s Hōmon Hyakushu sits at the juncture between the Japanese court’s ongoing literary and religious projects, exemplifying the late-Heian period (794 – 1185) formula kadō