In the same way that few British people have read all of Shakespeare's sonnets but many can quote at least a few lines of the lyric tradition, any adult who has gone through the Japanese school system is familiar with the Ogura "Hyakunin Isshu."
This collection of 100 waka — a classic poetic form written in lines of 5, 7, 5, 7 and 7 syllables — has been translated into English before. The first who dared was a British naval officer stationed in Yokohama in the Meiji Period who studied Japanese purely "out of personal desire."
But as Donald Keene, shincho professor of Japanese literature and university professor emeritus at Columbia University says of Peter McMillan's "One Hundred Poems, One Poem Each," published in April: This is by far the best translation to date.