Ki no Haseo

Ki no Haseo was a Japanese scholar, poet and diplomat active in the Heian period. He belonged to the Ki clan, which was politically influential in the Nara period, but lost its original position before his birth. He was an acquaintance of poets such as Miyako no Yoshika and Sugawara no Michizane, but was not closely affiliated with any political factions. In 894 he was appointed as a vice-ambassador during preparations to an ultimately canceled mission to China. He remained active as both a scholar and an official through the rest of his life. Many of works have been compiled in the collection Kikashū. While only one chapter survives, multiple poems and prose fragments which originally belonged to it have been identified. A second collection, Zoku Kike Shishū, is entirely lost. It is additionally sometimes proposed that he was also the author of Taketori Monogatari, but this remains uncertain. After his death a number of legends arose around him. Most notably, multiple variants of a tale in which he encounters an oni at Suzakumon are known.