Episode 13 · Utakoi

Utakoi

A thousand years ago in Heian Japan, a nobleman named Fujiwara no Sadaie sat down to arrange one hundred poems by one hundred poets, each verse answering the one before it like lines traded in a conversation. The plan was modest enough: decorate some sliding doors. Instead, those poems refused to stay put on the panels. What you get here is a loose, cheeky retelling of the Hyakunin Isshu, the famous anthology that even Murasaki Shikibu, author of The Tale of Genji, contributed to. One poem per poet, one hundred voices, and behind each one a private life the verse only hints at. Longing, gossip, bad decisions, all of it treated with a straight face and a wink. So what really happened between the lines of those hundred poems?