A woman poet of the early Heian period, daughter of a governor of Ise, from which she took her name. She served the consort of Emperor Uda, had love affairs with two Fujiwara brothers, bore a son to the emperor himself and later a daughter, the poet Nakatsukasa, to Prince Atsuyoshi. One of the Thirty-Six Immortals, she has twenty-two poems in the Kokinshū, more than any other woman, and was a leading composer of screen poems. Her Hyakunin Isshu poem on the short reeds of Naniwa is in the Shin Kokinshū.
難波潟 短き蘆の ふしの間も
逢はでこの世を 過ぐしてよとや
Naniwa-gata mijikaki ashi no fushi no ma mo / awade kono yo o sugushite yo to ya
Are you telling me to live out this life without meeting you even for a moment as brief as the space between the joints of a cut reed in Naniwa Lagoon?