Kokinshu Book III: Summer (135-168)

In Kokinshu aesthetics, summer is less important and less interesting than spring: a quarter the number of poems deal with it, and they obsessively focus on a single key image -- the lesser cuckoo, mentioned one way or another in 28 of the 34. In addition, more than the other books, the authors are mostly either from the editors' circle or older anonymous poets -- as if nobody else, at the time, was writing suitable material. There is, it seems, more inspiration in the flowers of spring and autumn's leaves.

Still, the season has its charms, and personally I find a lot to like here. I just wish they'd gotten in, I don't know, fireflies in mazy flight, or wildflowers in the fields. Or maybe that's just me -- you may prefer it the way it is:


( Kokinshu III:135-168 )

After which comes the first (of two) books of autumn. Scattering, swirling leaves ahoy!

(Index for this series)

---L.