Fujiwara no Kiyosuke



Fujiwara no Kiyosuke (藤原清輔) was a Japanese waka poet and poetry scholar of the late Heian period.

He was the second son of Akisuke (顕輔), compiler of the Shika Wakashū.

Poetry
The following poem by him was included as No. 84 in Fujiwara no Teika's Ogura Hyakunin Isshu:

He was a member of the conservative Rokujō school of poetic composition, and Donald Keene has called him a "mediocre poet". Suzuki et al., however, say that his brilliant poetry scholarship put him at the top of the waka world in his day.

He was one of the first to apply rules of choosing themes, participants and judges in the uta-awase poetry gatherings. His standards of judging poetry, made him a rival of Fujiwara no Shunzei.

About 1165, Emperor Nijō commissioned him to compile a waka anthology, which became the Shoku Shika Wakashū (続詞花和歌集). He compiled twenty books of 998 poems, a much larger anthology than its namesake, and submitted to the emperor expecting for it to be recognized as the seventh imperial anthology. The emperor died before its completion, and it remains consigned to the status of a private collection. Ultimately ninety-four of his poems were included in imperial collections.

Scholarship
Kiyosuke is known primarily as the author of the Fukuro Zōshi (袋草紙) and the Ōgishō (奥義抄) He was one of the first scholars to question the traditional 905 date of the Kokin Wakashū.