A woman poet of the late Heian and early Kamakura periods, daughter of the warrior-poet Minamoto no Yorimasa. She served Emperor Nijō, from whom her name derives, married after his death, and later returned to court in the service of Go-Toba's consort, competing in many contests before becoming a nun. One of the Thirty-Six Women Immortals, she has about seventy-five poems in imperial anthologies. Her Hyakunin Isshu poem compares her sleeves, never dry from tears, to a rock offshore that stays hidden even at low tide, an image so famous that she was nicknamed 'Sanuki of the offshore rock'.
わが袖は 潮干に見えぬ 沖の石の
人こそ知らね 乾く間もなし
Waga sode wa shiohi ni mienu oki no ishi no / hito koso shirane kawaku ma mo nashi
My sleeves are like the offshore stone that stays hidden beneath the sea even at low tide — no one knows of them, but they never have a moment to dry from my tears.