Empress Yamato was a poet and Empress of Japan

Japanese empresses

In Japan, empress may refer to either or .- Empresses regnant :There were eight female imperial reigns in Japan's early history between 593 and 770, and two more in the early modern period...

, as the wife of Emperor Tenji

Emperor Tenji

, also known as Emperor Tenchi, was the 38th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.Tenji's reign spanned the years from 661 through 671.-Traditional narrative:...

. She was a granddaughter of Emperor Jomei

Emperor Jomei

was the 34th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.Jomei's reign spanned the years from 629 through 641.-Traditional narrative:Before Jomei's ascension to the Chrysanthemum Throne, his personal name was or...

 (舒明天皇) and Soga no Hote-no-iratsume (蘇我法提郎女), through their son Prince Furuhito-no-Ōe (古人大兄皇子).

Her poetry is collected in the Man'yōshū (万葉集), the oldest existing collection of Japanese poetry

Japanese poetry

Japanese poets first encountered Chinese poetry during the Tang Dynasty. It took them several hundred years to digest the foreign impact, make it a part of their culture and merge it with their literary tradition in their mother tongue, and begin to develop the diversity of their native poetry. For...

 believed to have been collected by Ōtomo no Yakamochi

Otomo no Yakamochi

was a Japanese statesman and waka poet in the Nara period. He is a member of the . He was born into the prestigious Ōtomo clan; his grandfather was Ōtomo no Amaro and his father was Ōtomo no Tabito. Ōtomo no Kakimochi was his younger brother, and Ōtomo no Sakanoe no Iratsume his aunt...

(大伴 家持). After the death of her husband in 671, she wrote a song of mourning about him.