紀貫之
The judge was usually a poet of renown. During the "Teijiin Poetry Contest" the former emperor served as judge, and when one of his own offerings was matched against a superior poem by Ki no Tsurayuki, commented 'how can an imperial poem lose?', awarding himself a draw. Fujiwara Shunzei served as judge some twenty-one times. During the of 1192, he awarded victory to a poem with the line 'fields of grass', observing its reference to a previous work and commenting 'it is shocking for anyone to write poetry without knowing "Genji". Judging another contest he wrote how, upon recital, there must be 'allure ("en") and profundity (yūgen) ... an aura of its own that hovers about the poem much as a veil of haze among cherry blossoms, the belling of a stag before the autumn moon, the scent of springtime in the plum blossom, or the autumn rain in the crimson leaves upon the peak'.