mid-Heian period · 910–966Fujiwara no Asatada

A mid-Heian nobleman and poet, fifth son of Fujiwara no Sadakata, who became Middle Counselor in 965. One of the Thirty-Six Immortals, he has about twenty poems in imperial anthologies and was also an accomplished player of the shō mouth-organ. Anecdotes describe him as corpulent and trying to slim on a diet of chicken and hot water over rice. His Hyakunin Isshu poem, composed for the palace contest of 960, imagines a world in which lovers never met, so that neither would have cause to resent the other.