is an anthology of ''

imayō Japanese poetry is poetry typical of Japan, or written, spoken, or chanted in the Japanese language, which includes Old Japanese, Early Middle Japanese, Late Middle Japanese, and Modern Japanese, as well as poetry in Japan which was written in th ...

'' 今様 songs. Originally it consisted of two collections joined together by Cloistered

Emperor Go-Shirakawa was the 77th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession. His de jure reign spanned the years from 1155 through 1158, though arguably he effectively maintained imperial power for almost thirty-seven years through the ''ins ...

: the ''Kashishū'' 歌詞集 and the ''Kudenshū'' 口伝集. The works were probably from the repertoire of the Emperor's tutor, the aged singer Otomae, whose superlative mastery of the art derived from four generations of teachers. Only a fragment (about 10%) of this work is still extant. These songs were very popular in the 12th century

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 ...

, but quickly fell into disuse in the

Kamakura period The is a period of Japanese history that marks the governance by the Kamakura shogunate, officially established in 1192 in Kamakura by the first ''shōgun'' Minamoto no Yoritomo after the conclusion of the Genpei War, which saw the struggle b ...

.Earl Roy Miner, Hiroko Odagiri, and Robert E. Morrell (1985). ''The Princeton companion to classical Japanese literature.'' Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press. (p. 221).

Notes

Japanese poetry anthologies Late Old Japanese texts Heian period in literature 12th-century books Japanese Buddhist texts {{japan-culture-stub