Izumi Shikibu

Izumi Shikibu was a Japanese poet and court writer of the Heian period whose diary records an intense year of correspondence, meetings, and reflection. Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan brings her work together with diaries by Murasaki Shikibu and the writer conventionally known as the Daughter of Sugawara no Takasue. The 1920 Houghton Mifflin volume was translated by Annie Shepley Omori and Kochi Doi and introduced by Amy Lowell. Izumi's section is built from brief episodes and poems exchanged with Prince Atsumichi, showing how verse served as conversation, memory, and social judgment at court. Her writing is especially valued for the immediacy with which personal feeling enters a highly formal literary culture.