The 82nd emperor of Japan, enthroned at four in 1183 and ruling as retired sovereign from 1198. Gifted in both arms and letters, he founded the Bureau of Poetry, directed the compilation of the Shin Kokinshū and revised it with his own hand, fostering Teika, Ietaka and the other great poets of the age and writing a treatise on poetics. In 1221 he led the Jōkyū Rebellion against the Kamakura shogunate, was defeated and exiled to the island of Oki, where he kept writing and revising the anthology until his death. His Hyakunin Isshu poem weighs love and hatred for humankind in a world of sorrow.
人も愛し 人も恨めし あぢきなく
世を思ふゆゑに 物思ふ身は
People seem dear to me, and people seem hateful too — for I brood over this world that will not go the way I wish.
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