mid-Heian period · 906–943Fujiwara no Atsutada

A mid-Heian nobleman and poet, third son of the powerful minister Fujiwara no Tokihira. He became Provisional Middle Counselor in 942 but died the following year at thirty-eight. Handsome and a virtuoso of the biwa lute, he was famous for love affairs with the poet Ukon and with a former Ise priestess, and is counted among the Thirty-Six Immortals with about thirty poems in imperial anthologies. His Hyakunin Isshu poem confesses that all the longing he felt before their first meeting now seems as nothing.