Kokinshu Book IX: Travel (406-421)

Following partings with travelers, in Book IX we get poems of travelers on the road. This is, surprisingly, the shortest book in the Kokinshu -- you might think, especially given the Man'yoshu tradition, it would be a more popular genre. Apparently, though, just as the provinces -- that is, any place that wasn't the happening capital -- were unfashionable, so were the vicissitudes of traveling out there. In later poetry, the topic would return as a suitably refined loneliness, but for now, it seems the editors had slim pickings to chose from.

But enough -- let's get this show on the road. So to speak.


( Kokinshu IX:406-421 )

And that's the end of traveling. In the next book, the editors mix things up with a collection of wordplay poems -- some of them acrostics like #410, but most of another game entirely. These are an interesting challenge to translate, so expect it in four months or so.

(Index for this series)

---L.