The is a canon of Japanese poets who were anthologized in the middle Kamakura period. The compiler and exact date of the canon's construction is unknown, but its reference is subsequently noted in the Gunsho Ruijà «, volume 13.
Five of the 36, Ono no Komachi, Lady Ise, Nakatsukasa, Saigà « no Nyà Âgo and Kodai no Kimi also appeared in an earlier anthology with the similar title Thirty-Six Immortals of Poetry which dates from 1113 (late Heian Period). The poet Fujiwara no Kintà  chose this original selection that preceded the Thirty-Six Immortal Women Poets.
These five women poets from the original publication were included in the Thirty-Six Immortal Women Poets and canonized along with others from the Heian and Kamakura eras.
The women canonized in this compilation are typically noblewomen associated with the imperial court, for example, Lady Ise, consort to Emperor Uda, Inpumon'in no Tayà « (literally the Attendant to Empress Inpu), Michitsuna no haha (literally, Michitsuna's mother), Fujiwara no Shunzei no Musume (Literally Shunzei Fujiwara's daughter).
Scholars Esperanza Ramirez-Christensen and Yumiko Watanabe have suggested that the lack of a proper name or singular identity, symbolising broader structural power relations that marginalised court women, may have contributed to their autobiographic impulse to craft poetry.
Pre-modern Japanese literature professor Roselee Bundy traces the contribution to women's court poetry reaching its zenith in the mid Heian period as aesthetic communal events, before gradual professionalization of the genre began to exclude women's voices beginning in the Kamakura period.
In 1801 the ukiyo-e painter Chà Âbunsai Eishi made a series of paintings to depict the thirty-six immortal women poets to accompany the calligraphy of each poet's verse, as produced by 36 girls who were students of Hanagata Giryu's (è±形義èÂÂ) calligraphy school "Hanagata Shodo". The album, reproduced with woodblock printing was intended to publicize the school. The 36 portraits are divided into a "left" (å·¦) team and a "right" (å³) team where the left team comprised poets who lived between the ninth and eleventh centuries, and the right team was made up of those poets that lived in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
The teams square off in a pair-competition on each spread, which was a practice dating from the Heian period imperial court in the late ninth century. The Smithsonian researcher Andrew J. Pekarik compared this competitive social art form to poetry slams at the Nuyorican Poets Café in the 1990s.
The album was published by Nishimura Yohachi with an album binding (gajà Âsà Â) and also featured a woodblock printed cover designed by Hokusai. The block carvers were and .