mid-Heian period · 954–974Fujiwara no Yoshitaka

A mid-Heian poet, third son of the regent Fujiwara no Koretada. Appointed a captain of the guards, he died of smallpox in 974 at the age of twenty-one, on the same day as his elder brother. Remembered for his beauty and deep Buddhist piety, he is counted among the Late Classical Thirty-Six Immortals with twelve poems in imperial anthologies, and was the father of the great calligrapher Fujiwara no Yukinari. His Hyakunin Isshu poem, sent the morning after a lovers' meeting, wishes for a long life he did not live to see.