Fujiwara no Yoritada (藤原頼忠; 924 – 31 July 989), the second son of Saneyori, was a kugyo (high-ranked

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

ese noble) who served as

regent A regent (from Latin : ruling, governing) is a person appointed to govern a state '' pro tempore'' (Latin: 'for the time being') because the monarch is a minor, absent, incapacitated or unable to discharge the powers and duties of the monarchy ...

for

Emperor En'yū was the 64th emperor of Japan,Imperial Household Agency (''Kunaichō'') 円融天皇 (64)/ref> according to the traditional order of succession. En'yū's reign spanned the years from 969 through 984. Biography Before his ascension to the Chry ...

and

Emperor Kazan was the 65th emperor of Japan, Imperial Household Agency (''Kunaichō'') 花山天皇 (65)/ref> according to the traditional order of succession. Kazan's reign spanned the years from 984 through 986. Biography Before his ascension to the Chry ...

. His mother was a daughter of

Fujiwara no Tokihira was a Japanese statesman, courtier and politician during the Heian period.Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "Fujiwara no Tokihira" in ; Brinkley, Frank ''et al.'' (1915). Career Tokihira was a minister under Emperor Daigo. * 891 ('' Kanpy� ...

. His elder brother from the same mother Atsutoshi died before their father's death. In 977 he became

Sadaijin The ''Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary'', Kenkyusha Limited, was a government position in Japan in the late Nara and Heian periods. The position was consolidated in the Taihō Code of 702. The Asuka Kiyomihara Code of 689 marks the in ...

, and when his cousin, the regent Fujiwara no Kanemichi was in a critical medical condition, he ceded the position of Kampaku (regent) to Yoritada, instead of his rival brother Kaneie. Although Yoritada's two daughters were consorts of Emperor En'yū and Emperor Kazan, they did not have any sons. Yoritada thus had only a tenable blood relationship with the Emperors. His cousin Kaneie was the grandfather of Crown Prince Yasuhito ( Emperor Ichijō), and he encouraged Emperor Kazan to abdicate a throne. By the accession of Emperor Ichijō, Yoritada retired from his post as Kampaku, and Kaneie became Sessho (regent) for his grandson Emperor Ichijō. Yoritada was Daijō Daijin from 978, and he is referred to as Rengi-kō (廉義公) (posthumous name of Daijō Daijin). His poet son

Fujiwara no Kintō , also known as Shijō-dainagon, was a Japanese poet, admired by his contemporaries "... Fujiwara no Kinto (966–1008), the most admired poet of the day." pg 283 of Donald Keene's '' Seeds in the Heart''. and a court bureaucrat of the Heian p ...

compiled the ''

Shūi Wakashū The , often abbreviated as ''Shūishū'', is the third imperial anthology of waka from Heian period Japan. It was compiled by Emperor Kazan in about 1005.Keene 1999 : 283 Its twenty volumes contain 1,351 poems. The details of its publication an ...

'', and also a collection of Chinese verse and prose (~600 selections) and 25 Japanese poems in his ''Wakan Rōeishū'' (和漢朗詠集), a widely admired collection that helped spread the influence of Chinese culture (and especially the poetry of

Bai Juyi Bai Juyi (also Bo Juyi or Po Chü-i; ; 772–846), courtesy name Letian (樂天), was a renowned Chinese poet and Tang dynasty government official. Many of his poems concern his career or observations made about everyday life, including as g ...

) in the Japanese Imperial court. Kintō's collection would be imitated by a successor, Fujiwara no Mototoshi's ''Shinsen Rōeishū'' (新撰朗詠集). Kintō also wrote an influential critical guide to incorporating

's poetic techniques (and more generally, T'ang dynasty poetry) into Japanese poetry called ''Shinsen Zuinō'' (新撰髄脳) ("The Essence of Poetry Newly Selected").

References

*pg. 483 and 181-183 of ''Japanese Court Poetry'',

Earl Miner Earl Roy Miner (February 21, 1927 – April 17, 2004) was a professor at Princeton University, and a noted scholar of Japanese literature and especially Japanese poetry; he was also active in early modern English literature (for instance, his obit ...

, Robert H. Brower. 1961,

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

Press, LCCN 61-10925 *''Nihonshi Shoka Keizu Jimmei Jiten'', Owada,T. et al. 2003,

Kodansya is a Japanese privately-held publishing company headquartered in Bunkyō, Tokyo. Kodansha is the largest Japanese publishing company, and it produces the manga magazines '' Nakayoshi'', ''Afternoon'', ''Evening'', '' Weekly Shōnen Magazine'' ...

. (Japanese) *''Ōkagami'', Hosaka,H.(translation into modern Japanese) 1981,

. (Japanese) 924 births 989 deaths Fujiwara clan Regents of Japan {{Japan-noble-stub