SOME UTA SPECIMENS FROM THE HYAKUNIN ISHIU ANTHOLOGY COMPILED IN 1235 BY SADAIYE, A NOBLE OF THE KYOTO COURT
"The flowers and my love
Passed away under the rain,
While I idly looked upon them
Where is my yester-love?"
Ono no Komachi.
"Ono no Komachi," Ki no Tsurayuki remarks, "belongs to the school of Sotoori Hime of ancient times. There is feeling in her poems, but little vigour. She is like a lovely woman who is suffering from ill health. Want of vigour, however, is only natural in a woman's poetry." Although she left little work, her poetical capacity as well as her beauty, it is said, caused her to be called to the Imperial House. She was not from a family of high position by any means, as she was a daughter of a certain chief officer of a county. There is no other woman of old Japan whose life figures so largely in fiction; and her name as a model of beauty more than as a poetess is universally known. Komachi is regarded as a synonym of "beautiful woman "; there were or are many beautiful women nicknamed Komachi. Whether a fiction or not, Fukakusa no
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