Kamakura period · 1169–1206Fujiwara no Yoshitsune

A statesman and poet of the early Kamakura period, second son of the chancellor Kujō Kanezane and nephew of Jien. He became regent in 1202 and Chancellor of the Realm in 1204, but died suddenly in 1206 at thirty-eight. A central figure of the retired Emperor Go-Toba's poetic circle, he sponsored the great Six Hundred Round Poetry Contest, patronized Teika, and wrote the Japanese preface to the Shin Kokinshū, which contains seventy-nine of his refined and stately poems. He was also a distinguished calligrapher. His Hyakunin Isshu poem hears a cricket on a frosty night while he sleeps alone.