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Ono no Komachi, known for her beauty, poetry and madness, lived in the middle of the ninth century and served as a lady-in-waiting in the Heian court.

Ono no Komachi poem at ZuishininDespite her legendary beauty and obvious passions, she never married. But her poems more than make up for whatever she may have missed in the way of martial bliss.

On such a night as this
When no moon lights your way to me,
I wake, my passion blazing,
My breast a fire raging, exploding flame
While within me, my heart chars.

(from An Introduction to Japanese Court Poetry by E. Miner)

In mid life she was sent out of the capital to Yamashina, where she supposedly resided for some years at Zuishin-in Temple. She is said to have gone mad there and the temple now honors her every year with the Hanezu Odori. She probably wrote this poem during her stay at the temple:
The color of the blossoms have faded
Vainly, I age through the rains of the world
Watching in melancholy.

(translation by N. Teele)

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Izumi Shikibu (circa 1000), another great woman writer of the Heian period, also wrote lasting poetry and had a difficult personal life.

Izumi Shikibu shown on an 18th century woodblock printWe know a lot more about her life than Komachi. Izumi Shikibu got her name from her marriage to the governor of the province of Izumi. She divorced him after their first child and returned to the court in Kyoto, where she had been raised. Soon she was having an affair with a prince, who died, a...