Welcome to the One Hundred Poets Digital Collection!

Originating from the personal collection of Professor Joshua Mostow of the UBC Department of Asian Studies, this project was made possible through generous funding from the Toshiba International Foundation (TIFO) and collaboration between the UBC Department of Asian Studies, Asian Library, Digitization Centre, Rare Books and Special Collections and Technical Services.

The digital collection consists at present of 74 books and 20 different card sets relating to the poetry anthology Hyakunin Isshu 百人一首 (One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each, hereafter HNIS), edited by the famous poet and scholar, Fujiwara no Teika (1162-1241) in the 1230s. It is unquestionably the most famous poetry anthology in the Japanese tradition.

The digital collection was created as part of a larger project and is centered around a collection of largely Edo-period (1615-1868) material focusing on HNIS. These works will complement the Library’s other major Japanese digital collection, the Beans Tokugawa Map Collection—one of the three most important collections of Edo-period Japanese maps in the world.