mid-Heian period · dates unknown (978?–?)Izumi Shikibu

The most celebrated woman poet of the Heian court. Married to a governor of Izumi, from which she took her name, and mother of Koshikibu no Naishi, she became the lover first of Prince Tametaka and then of his brother Prince Atsumichi; the Izumi Shikibu Diary records that affair. After the prince's death she served Empress Shōshi alongside Murasaki Shikibu, who acknowledged her brilliance. Her passionate, unrestrained style has about 240 poems in imperial anthologies. Her Hyakunin Isshu poem, written on a sickbed, asks for one last meeting as a memory to carry into the next world.