was a Japanese

Tendai , also known as the Tendai Dharma Flower School (天台法華宗, ''Tendai hokke shū,'' sometimes just ''Hokkeshū''), is a Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition with significant esoteric elements that was officially established in Japan in 806 by t ...

monk who documented his journey to the Chinese Buddhist centres of

Mount Tiantai Tiantai Mountain (also Tí Taî in the local language) is a mountain in Tiantai County, Taizhou, Zhejiang Province, China. Its highest peak, Huading, reaches a height of . The mountain was made a national park on 1 August 1988. One of nine r ...

and

Mount Wutai Mount Wutai, also known by its Chinese name Wutaishan and as is a sacred Buddhist site at the headwaters of the Qingshui in Shanxi Province, China. Its central area is surrounded by a cluster of flat-topped peaks or mesas roughly correspondin ...

in 1072–1073 in . Jōjin's home monastery was

Enryaku-ji is a Tendai monastery located on Mount Hiei in Ōtsu, overlooking Kyoto. It was first founded in 788 during the early Heian period (794–1185) by Saichō (767–822), also known as Dengyō Daishi, who introduced the Tendai sect of Mahayana ...

Mount Hiei is a mountain to the northeast of Kyoto, lying on the border between the Kyoto and Shiga Prefectures, Japan. The temple of Enryaku-ji, the first outpost of the Japanese Tendai (Chin. Tiantai) sect of Buddhism, was founded atop Mount Hiei by ...

. He sent a cache of printed texts back to Japan in 1073 covering translations made since mission in 984. Literature related to Jōjin figures prominently in

Nihonjinron ''Nihonjinron'' (: ''treatises on Japaneseness'') is a genre of ethnocentric nationalist literary work that focuses on issues of Japanese national and cultural identity. ''Nihonjinron'' posits concepts such as Japanese being a "unique isolate, ...

- a genre of texts that focuses on issues of Japanese national and cultural identity. They appear in two early anthologies, the more famous being the

Shin Kokin Wakashū The , also known in abbreviated form as the or even conversationally as the Shin Kokin, is the eighth imperial anthology of waka poetry compiled by the Japanese court, beginning with the '' Kokin Wakashū'' circa 905 and ending with the '' Shin ...

, the eighth imperially sponsored collection of poetry in Japanese, compiled circa 1205, where, it is preceded by the headnote, "Composed by his mother when the monk Jōjin went to China." The poem attracted little attention until 1942, when the newspapers that evolved into the present

Mainichi Shimbun The is one of the major newspapers in Japan, published by In addition to the ''Mainichi Shimbun'', which is printed twice a day in several local editions, Mainichi also operates an English-language news website called , and publishes a bilin ...

published , literally meaning something like, "One Hundred Patriotic Poems by One Hundred Poets." The title refers to the familiar

Hyakunin Isshu is a classical Japanese anthology of one hundred Japanese ''waka'' by one hundred poets. ''Hyakunin isshu'' can be translated to "one hundred people, one poem ach; it can also refer to the card game of '' uta-garuta'', which uses a deck compo ...

, a medieval anthology of one hundred poems, each by a different poet. Because the poems came to be used in a card game played in Japanese homes every New Year, they are among the best known in the classical Japanese poetic canon.

Notes

1011 births 1081 deaths Japanese monks Buddhist clergy of the Heian period {{Japan-reli-bio-stub Tendai Buddhist monks