Abstract
Gotoba-no-in-Kunaikyo (後鳥羽院宮内卿) was born and died at an unknown date. She entered
the Go-Toba-in Imperial Poetry Club around the age of 16. She was highly acclaimed as a waka poet
of the Shin-Kokin period, tracing her poetry composition activities reveals only four years of
composition activity from 1200 to 1203 AD. Her waka poems, which were under the influence of the
Shin-Kokin period, are characterized by a rich sense of color.
The Sendō Kudai Gojisshu (仙洞句題五十首) is a poetry contest organized by Emperor Gotobano-in（後鳥羽院）,consisting of fifty poems. It is presumed that the poems were submitted sequentially starting in September of the first year of the Ken'nin first year (建仁元年 1201), and that the results were announced in December of the same year.
The Sendō Kudai Gojisshu is a poetry contest planned immediately after the establishment of the Waka Office in July of the first year of the Ken'nin first year between Emperor Gotoba-no-in and Fujiwara-no-Yoshitsune (藤原良経). The themes comprised fifty subjects: twenty on “Flowers,”
twenty on “Moon,” and ten on “Objects of Longing.” The themes were primarily drawn from the
sections “Spring,” “Autumn,” and “Love”—the sections with the most poems in the eight imperial
anthologies—and each poet composed fifty waka poems on each theme.
Furthermore, the Sendō Kudai Gojisshu comprises a total of three hundred waka poems, twelve of which were included in the Shinkokin Wakashū (新古今和歌集). This makes it a highly unusual poetry contest for its time.
Within the Sendō Kudai Gojisshu, Gotoba-no-in-Kunaikyo composed fifty waka poems. This study will focus primarily on the twenty poems composed on the theme of “flowers”.
