Thirty-Six Immortal Women Poets

The compiler and exact date of the canon's construction is unknown,[1] but its reference is subsequently noted in the Gunsho Ruijū, volume 13.

[2] Five of the 36, Ono no Komachi, Lady Ise, Nakatsukasa, Saigū no Nyōgo and Kodai no Kimi also appeared in an earlier anthology with the similar title Thirty-Six Immortals of Poetry which dates from 1113 (late Heian Period).

Scholars Esperanza Ramirez-Christensen and Yumiko Watanabe have suggested that the lack of a proper name or singular identity, symbolising broader structural power relations that marginalised court women, may have contributed to their autobiographic impulse to craft poetry.

The teams square off in a pair-competition on each spread, which was a practice dating from the Heian period imperial court in the late ninth century.

The Smithosonian researcher Andrew J. Pekarik compared this competitive social art form to poetry slams at the Nuyorican Poets Café in the 1990s.