Hyakunin Isshu represents 100 poets, with one waka poem selected from each poet.
The title literally means “one hundred people, one poem each.” The best-known version, the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu, was assembled in Japan during the Kamakura period and became the standard collection associated with the name.
Its poets range across several centuries of Japanese literary history, including emperors, aristocrats, court ladies, Buddhist monks, and professional poets. The poems themselves often explore love, longing, seasonal landscapes, political life, and religious reflection.
A common mix-up is confusing the number of poets with the number of poems: the collection contains 100 of each. It is also sometimes treated as the name of the card game based on the anthology, but the original reference is the poetry collection.