Michael Freiling studied computer science at the University of San Francisco, where he also found the time to take poetry classes and became interested in Japanese literature. In 1977, he received a Henry Luce scholarship and was assigned to study at Kyoto University for a year. He spent most of that time studying Japanese and translating Heian-era poetry. He returned to Kyoto years later, in 2014, where he began writing poetry in both English and Japanese. His work has been published in anthologies and in the haiku journals Seashores and Frogpond. In 2018, he was asked to help translate a collection of senryu poems written by Japanese-Americans who were unlawfully imprisoned during World War II; it was published in 2023 under the title They Never Asked (Oregon State University Press).
""…one of the most respected and oft-quoted compilations of the Japanese poetic canon. Translated with both grace and precision, the poems are elegant expressions of the depth of human emotions blended with evocations of the natural world in which they lived. A must-read for anyone interested in Japanese culture or poetry in general."" —William Scott Wilson, renowned translator of Japanese literature ""In early thirteenth century Japan, Fujiwara no Teika chose one hundred poems of solitude, nature, aging, loneliness, beauty, and desire from one hundred poets of the previous five centuries—Hyakunin Isshu—a collection representing the pinnacle work of the majestic Heian period. […] As an undergraduate at the University of San Francisco in 1977, Michael Freiling won a Luce Scholarship allowing him to study Japanese literature for a year in Kyoto. His work on this translation of Hyakunin Isshu began all those years ago."" —Matt Sutherland, Foreword