The Thirty-Six Immortal Woman Poets

This group of thirty-six women poets and novelists, who flourished in the imperial court of Japan from the ninth through the thirteenth centuries, has long been considered to be among the most important writers in the history of Japanese literature. Several, such as Murasaki Shikibu, the author of The Tale of Genji, are already well known in the West. Others have yet to receive their proper recognition. As a group, they came to be known as The Thirty-six Immortal Women Poets.
Their preferred form of poetic expression was the waka, a thirty-one syllable poem arranged in five measures of five, seven, five, seven, and seven syllables. Aristocratic women of the Heian period (794-1185) took up the waka as their literary vehicle. It was a primary means of romantic communication between men and women, a high art inspiring dedicated professional attention, as well as a social pastime.
Fine poems were circulated at court and assembled in carefully structured anthologies. They were also publicly presented within the form of the poetry competition (uta-awase), which had developed from games played among court women, and emerged as a significant literary and social structure.
Anthologies and the records of competitions were copied and studied—even memorised—as models of the finest literature. Sometimes hypothetical competitions between poets of different centuries were created by selecting representative examples and then illustrating these collections with imaginary portraits of the poets.
Such handscrolls and books were not only made as artistic works in themselves, but as instructional guides for new generations of poets.