Ariwara no Narihira (在原 業平, 825 – 9 July 880) was a Japanese courtier and waka poet of the early Heian period.

Legends have held that he had affairs with the high priestess of the Ise Grand Shrine and the poet Ono no Komachi, and that he fathered Emperor Yōzei.

[7] After Abo's return to Heijō,[6] in 826, Narihira and his brothers Yukihira, Nakahira and Morihira [ja] were made commoners and given the surname Ariwara.

"[c][12] The Tales of Ise portrays Narihira as falling in love with Fujiwara no Takaiko [ja], a consort of Emperor Seiwa, and it is hinted that this was one of the reasons for his leaving the capital and travelling east.

[5] However, a passage in the Kokinshū describes the meeting ambiguously, in a manner that implies Narihira did not sleep with the priestess herself but rather another woman in her service.

[16][d] Medieval commentaries call her Narihira's wife,[18] and some modern scholars, such as Katagiri,[19] do the same, although the only early source that explicitly names her is the note in the Kokinshū.

[20] It has been speculated, based in part on their being considered the most beautiful man and woman of their age, that Narihira and the poet Ono no Komachi may have been lovers, but there is little evidence for this.

[22] Chikafusa likely used Kamakura period Kokinshū commentaries such as the extant Bishamondō-bon Kokinshū-chū (毘沙門堂本古今集注), which speculates that one of Komachi's poems was left for Narihira after a tryst.

[27] Poem 861 in the Kokinshū, Narihira's last, expresses his shock and regret that his death should come so soon:[28] つひにゆく 道とはかねて 聞きしかど 昨日今日とは 思はざりしを tsui ni yuku michi to wa kanete kikishikado kinō kyō to wa omowazarishi wo Long ago I heard That this is the road we must all Travel in the end, But I never thought it might Be yesterday or today.

In the Middle Ages he was considered a deity (kami) or even an avatar of the Buddha Dainichi, and so it is possible that some, that have been called graves of Narihira's, are in fact sacred sites consecrated to him rather than places where he was actually believed to have been buried.

[37] Zai is the Sino-Japanese reading of the first character of his surname Ariwara, and Go, meaning "five", refers to him and his four brothers Yukihira, Nakahira, Morihira, and Ōe no Otondo.

[42] Of the eleven poems the Gosen Wakashū attributed to Narihira, several were really by others—for example, two were actually by Fujiwara no Nakahira and one by Ōshikōchi no Mitsune.

17 in Fujiwara no Teika's Ogura Hyakunin Isshu: ちはやぶる 神代も聞かず 竜田川 からくれなゐに 水くくるとは Chihayaburu kami-yo mo kikazu tatsuta-gawa kara-kurenai ni mizu kuguru to wa Even the almighty gods of old never knew such beauty: on the river Tatsuta in autumn sunlight a brocade— reds flowing above blue water below.

As the karuta "name card" of the main character Chihaya Ayase, the poem appears frequently in the manga and anime Chihayafuru, and its history and meaning are discussed.

[50] The following poem, number 618 in the Kokinshū, is cited by Keene as an example of Narihira's use of engo related to water: つれづれの ながめにまさる 涙河 そでのみぬれて 逢ふよしもなし tsurezure no nagame ni masaru namidagawa sode nomi nurete au yoshi mo nashi Lost in idle brooding.

The "water" engo are nagame ("brooding", but a pun on naga-ame "long rain"), namidagawa ("a river of tears") and nurete ("is soaked").

[57] The Edo-period kokugaku scholar Motoori Norinaga interpreted the first part of it as a pair of rhetorical questions, marked by the particle ya.

[e][44] Ki no Yoshimochi repeats this in his Chinese preface to the Kokinshū, though according to literary scholars Rodd and Henkenius, it may not be negative criticism, and may even "be seen as complimentary".

[59]Poet and translator Peter McMillan says the large number of Narihira's poems included in the Kokinshū and later court anthologies is an indicator of the high regard in which his poetry was held.

[64] Keene speculates that it is at least possible that Narihira originally composed the work from his and others' poems as a kind of inventive autobiography, and some later author came across his manuscript after his death and expanded on it.

[68] The late 11th-century[69] Tale of Sagoromo [ja] refers to Ise by the variant name Zaigo Chūjō no Nikki ("Narihira's diary").

[40] He and his contemporary Ono no Komachi were considered the archetypes of the beautiful man and woman of the Heian court, and appear as such in many later literary works, particularly in Noh theatre.

[73] Though not directly stated in the text, later commentators have interpreted The Tales of Ise as implying that Narihira's illicit union with the empress Fujiwara no Takaiko made him the true father of Emperor Yōzei; whether Murasaki interpreted the work this way is uncertain, but The Tale of Genji describes a very similar incident in which the protagonist, a former imperial prince made a commoner, has an affair with an empress and sires a son who ultimately becomes emperor as his true parentage is kept secret.

[74] Along with his contemporary Ono no Komachi and the protagonist of The Tale of Genji, Narihira figured prominently in Edo-period ukiyo-e prints and was alluded to in the ukiyo-zōshi of Ihara Saikaku.