Saigyō

Saigyō (1118-1190) was born Satō Norikiyo into an aristocratic military family. He found himself unsuited to a warrior’s life and, following a religious vocation, took orders in 1140. The change in his status allowed him a degree of freedom hitherto unknown to him to mix with people from different social backgrounds and move around the country and the rest of his life was spent either on the road or at one of several sacred places near the capital.

Like any man of his time, Saigyō had often composed poetry, and in his youth he studied with Minamoto no Shunrai and Fujiwara no Shunzei, but it was the experiences that his life as a priest gave him that acted as the stimulus to his major work and cemented his reputation. Most of his best work relates to immediate experience, and in his arrangements of his own poems into accounts of his travels are the foundation stones upon which the poetic diaries of Matsuo Bashō are built.

His reputation has remained consistently high, from soon after his death when he had 94 poems selected for inclusion in the Shinkokinshū, to the present day, when he is exceeded only by Bashō in the affections of modern Japanese readers of poetry. Together with Kakinomoto no Hitomaro and Fujiwara no Teika, he is one of the four giants of waka.

Saigyō has the following poems on WakaPoetry.net:

SZS I: 69
SZS IV: 267
SZS VIII: 516
SZS IX: 603
SZS IX: 605
SZS XIV: 875
SZS XIV: 876
SZS XV: 928
SZS XV: 929
SZS XVII: 1065
SZS XIX: 1231
SZS XX: 1278
SKKS I: 51
SKKS I: 79
SKKS I: 86
SKKS II: 126
SKKS III: 262
SKKS III: 263
SKKS IV: 299
SKKS IV: 300
SKKS IV: 362
SKKS V: 472
SKKS VI: 570
SKKS VI: 585
SKKS VI: 625
SKKS VIII: 793
SKKS VIII: 831
SKKS IX: 885
SKKS IX: 886
SKKS IX: 887
SKKS X: 937
SKKS X: 938
SKKS XII: 1099
SKKS XII: 1100
SKKS XII: 1147
SKKS XII: 1148
SKKS XIII: 1155
SKKS XIII: 1185
SKKS XIII: 1193
SKKS XIII: 1200
SKKS XIII: 1205
SKKS XIII: 1230
SKKS XIII: 1231
SKKS XIV: 1267
SKKS XIV: 1268
SKKS XIV: 1269
SKKS XIV: 1297
SKKS XIV: 1298
SKKS XIV: 1307
SKKS XVI: 1471
SKKS XVI: 1532
SKKS XVI: 1533
SKKS XVI: 1534
SKKS XVI: 1535
SKKS XVI: 1536
SKKS XVI: 1562
SKKS XVII: 1613
SKKS XVII: 1615
SKKS XVII: 1619
SKKS XVII: 1632
SKKS XVII: 1633
SKKS XVII: 1642
SKKS XVII: 1643
SKKS XVII: 1659
SKKS XVII: 1660
SKKS XVII: 1676
SKKS XVII: 1677
SKKS XVII: 1678
SKKS XVII: 1679
SKKS XVII: 1682
SKKS XVIII: 1748
SKKS XVIII: 1749
SKKS XVIII: 1750
SKKS XVIII: 1751
SKKS XVIII: 1780
SKKS XVIII: 1781
SKKS XVIII: 1808
SKKS XVIII: 1828
SKKS XVIII: 1829
SKKS XVIII: 1830
SKKS XVIII: 1831
SKKS XVIII: 1842
SKKS XVIII: 1844
SKKS XIX: 1877
SKKS XIX: 1878
SKKS XIX: 1879
SKKS XX: 1976
SKKS XX: 1978

'Simply moving and elegant'