This is rather lengthily titled petry match, Yōzei’in ichi no miko himegimi uta’awase, which translates as the ‘Poetry Match held by Former Emperor Yōzei between the Daughters of the First Prince’. The prince in question was Prince Motoyoshi (890-943) who was one of the organisers of the love poetry match we have just completed. The match was held on the 15th day of the Ninth Month, Tenryaku 2 [19 October 948] five years after Motoyoshi’s death when Yōzei was 82. This is the last poetry match we have a record of Yōzei’s involvement in, as he was to die the following year. Sadly, the names of Motoyoshi’s daughters have not been recorded, so we know them only as ‘Oldest Daughter’ (Ōigimi)[i] and ‘Second Daughter’ (Nakagimi), nor do we know anything else about them as individuals.
Like most of Yōzei’s poetic events, this seems to have been a small-scale private affair with its focus on poetry as the entertainment more than anything else which, perhaps, accounts for the informal tone of some of the works presented. It seems probable that the event was conceived as following the model of the earlier ‘Poetry Match held by the Kyōgoku Lady of the Bedchamber’ (Kyōgoku no miyasudokoro uta’awase) in 921, as it follows that match’s pattern of having poems composed as responses to earlier works.
[i] There is a possibility that the older daughter was named Princess Akiko (Akiko-joō 明子女王), but that has not been definitely confirmed.
