Hirohiko Okano, a prominent Japanese tanka poet who served as a poetry selector for the annual Utakai Hajime New Year's poetry-reading ceremony at the Imperial Palace, died on April 24. He was 101.

Born in Mie Prefecture in 1924, Okano studied under folklorist and poet Shinobu Orikuchi at Kokugakuin University and joined the Torifunesha tanka society. He won an award from the Kajins Association, a society of modern tanka poets, in 1968 for his first book of poems.

He gave tanka writing guidance to Emperor Hirohito, posthumously known as Emperor Showa, as an adviser to the Imperial Household Agency and served as a selector of poems submitted for recitals at the Utakai Hajime from 1979 to 2008.…