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(Post split in two for length.)

Around 1235, Fujiwara no Teika compiled for the father-in-law of his son Tame’ei a collection of one hundred poems by one hundred poets, a common anthology of the time. Partly because of Teika’s stature as Japan’s last great classical poet and partly because, within its roughly chronological history of Japanese poetry to date, he selected a variety of subjects and styles in interesting patterns, it became the exemplar of the genre—to the point that referring to just the Hyakunin Isshu without modifier means this “100 People, 1 Poem (Each).” It was treated a mini-manual of classical poetry, taught in the standard school curriculum, and used as the basis of a memory card game still sometimes played at New Years.

Not every poem is the best, or even most representative, poem by the poet (Narihira, I'm looking at yours) but in context, in the ebb and flow of conversation, Teika's choice usually works. He was not only a very good poet but a canny editor—not to mention an important scholar, responsible for establishing the standard texts of such classics as the Kokinshu and Tale of Genji.

The collection has been translated, in whole or in part, many times, by good scholars and good poets. There is therefore no reason to translate it again except as exercises in an archaic form of Japanese of no use to any modern student.

So of course I did.


All translation is interpretation. I’ve tried to render the sense and tone as I understand it, within the limits of what I can make a good English poem. This is not always the most literal sense—where a word has an implied referent or no English equivalent, I often translated the gloss. Likewise, “pivot words” read punningly with more than one meaning are usually double-translated in each sense. Where possible, I read grammatically disconnected prefatory lines as metaphorically appropriate, and often made the implicit comparison explicit. I used the English analog of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables for the original waka form, but when faced with either padding the language or a defective syllable count, I chose bad form over bad poetry. I am weak that way. Given the differences between rigorously head-last Japanese and mostly head-first English syntax, it is often impossible to reproduce the order of images, but I did my best to maintain the rhetorical structures (pivot doublets aside).

If these principles have, as I sometimes suspect, led me into the sin of over-literalness at the expense of ambiguity, so be it. There are, at least, a couple I’m pleased with as English poems in their own right.

I’ve kept annotations to what seems the minimum necessary context. For my base text, I used this edition by the Japanese Text Initiative because it was convenient—I’m a student, not a scholar, of Japanese and not competent to evaluated alternatives. I have, however, standardized the somewhat eccentrically modernized romanizations (which were taken from MacCauley’s 1917 edition). Commentaries were already being written soon after Teika died, and as the language became ever more archaic, the number only grew. I found the annotations published by Ogura Sansô particularly useful, especially for explaining classical verb forms; for those poems also in the Kokinshu, the Milord Club database was also helpful. Were I a scholar, I would no doubt have consulted others to triangulate interpretations. For English translations and commentaries, I particularly recommend Stephen Carter’s Traditional Japanese Poetry (Stanford: 1991) and Joshua Mostow’s Pictures of the Heart (Honolulu: 1996).


Background notes:

Waka ("Japanese song") is the usual term for the poetic form used in the One Hundred People, One Poem Each: 31 morae (the technical term for the Japanese analog of the English syllable) in groups of 5-7-5-7-7 without breaking semantic units across groups, which are thus poetic lines. The term tanka properly refers only to works written in this form since the late 19th century.

A pivot word (kakekotoba) is a word or phrase used punningly, usually done for serious rather than comic effect, to pack more meaning into a waka’s small space. This can be done by simply reading a double-meaning “on top of” the main sense or by reading the pivot with one meaning with the words before it and another with those after. An example of the latter in English might be “with you gone I pine trees moan in the wind,” read as “with you gone I pine / pine trees moan in the wind.” (This happens to be an analog of the common pivot matsu meaning “to wait” and “pine tree.”) This is easier to pull off in a language with a high density of homophones and (at the time) no punctuation.

A pillow word (makurakotoba) is a stock epithet. Some pillow words became so conventionalized the original meaning can only be guessed at. They mostly appear only in the earliest poems of One Hundred People.

Allusive variation (honkadori) is the technique of quoting, with alterations, one or more earlier poems. The ideal was to make a new poem with the tone and context of the alluded poems underlying it, thus packing still more meaning into a small waka. This became stylish only in the latest poems of One Hundred People, after being popularized by Teika himself.

Most Heian court ladies are identified only by a use-name—personal names were used only by close relations and so rarely recorded. Many use-names were derived from a title or position, sometimes their own but more often that of a male relative—father, husband, brother, or even son. When the poet is called “Mother of So-and-so,” it’s because that’s the name we have.


For information about the book for which this post is an early draft, see here.



One Hundred People, One Poem Each

1. Emperor Tenji

aki no ta no
kariho no io no
toma o arami
waga koromode wa
tsuyu ni nuretsutsu
    In the autumn fields
my hut, my harvest-time hut—
    its thatching is rough
and so the sleeves of my robe
keep getting wet from the dew.
 
秋の田の かりほの庵の 苫をあらみ わが衣手は 露にぬれつつ

Father of Jitô (#2). The poem wasn’t attributed to Tenji a until few centuries after his death, making the attestation doubtful, especially as it appears to be a reworked folk song—one sung in the persona of a lonely guard sleeping in the fields of ripening grain to protect them from animals. Tsuyu can be understood as “tears” as well as “dewdrops.”



2. Empress Jitô

haru sugite
natsu kinikerashi
shirotae no
koromo hosu chô
ama no kaguyama
    Springtime is over
and summer, it seems, has come—
    it’s said they air out
pure-white robes of mulberry
on heavenly Mount Kagu.

春過ぎて 夏来にけらし 白妙の 衣ほすてふ 天の香具山

Daughter of Tenji (#1), wife of Emperor Tenmu, and Tenmu’s successor as empress in her own right. Her personal name before her accession was Unonosarara or Unonosasara (the pronunciation of the kanji is uncertain). This is a garbled version of the text in the Man’yoshu anthology, which directly reports that the robes are airing rather than, as here, marking it as hearsay (which reads oddly given Mount Kagu was easily visible less than a mile from Jitô’s palace near Asuka). Shirotae no is a pillow-word or stock epithet for white objects, meaning roughly “as white as cloth woven from fiber from mulberry-tree bark”; given the period, it’s plausible to read this as literal. Kagu is “heavenly” because it is where Amaterasu, the sun goddess, hid her light in a cave.



3. Kakinomoto no Hitomaro

ashibiki no
yamadori no o no
shidari o no
naganagashi yo o
hitori ka mo nen
    On a night as long
as the long, drooping tail of
    a mountain pheasant
of the foot-dragging mountains,
must I also sleep alone?

あしびきの 山鳥の尾の しだり尾の ながながし夜を ひとりかもねむ

A minor official in the courts of Jitô (#2) and her successors who was deified as one of the two Shinto gods of peotry. Mated pheasants were believed to sleep separately. Ashibiki no is a pillow-word or stock epithet for mountains, originally meaning something like “foot-dragging” or “foot-weary,” basically giving the sense of “steep”; I left it literal as a poeticism.



4. Yamabe no Akahito

tago no ura ni
uchi-idete mireba
shirotae no
fuji no takane ni
yuki wa furitsutsu
    Just as I set out
for Tago Bay, I look up—
    and on the pure white
of Mount Fuji’s lofty peak
the snow continues to fall.

田子の浦に 打ち出でてみれば 白妙の 富士の高嶺に 雪はふりつつ

A younger, higher-ranking contemporary of Hitomaro (#3), deified as the other god of poetry. Again, the One Hundred People text is different from the Man’yoshu version. In contrast to #2, here I read shirotae no as just an epithet.



5. Sarumaru

okuyama ni
momiji fumi`wake
naku shika no
koe kiku toki zo
aki wa kanashiki
    At those times I hear
the voice of the crying stag,
    stepping through red leaves
in the depths of the mountains,
autumn is most sorrowful.

奥山に 紅葉ふみわけ 鳴く鹿の 声きく時ぞ 秋は悲しき

An otherwise unknown priest of the Nara or early Heian periods. The sika deer native to Japan is remarkably vocal in mating season. It’s grammatically ambiguous whether it or the speaker is walking through the leaves.



6. Ôtomo no Yakamochi

kasasagi no
wataseru hashi ni
oku shimo no
shiroki o mireba
yo zo fukenikeru
    I know when I see
the whiteness of the hoarfrost
    lying on the bridge
of outstretched wings of magpies
that night has indeed grown late.

かささぎの 渡せる橋に 置く霜の 白きを見れば 夜ぞふけにける

The final editor of the Man’yoshu. The Magpie Bridge was a stairway or passage in the imperial palace (though only in Kyoto, not the Nara capital of Yakamochi’s lifetime—which suggests this was actually written after his death), but it’s worded to also be a complimentary reference to the Tanabata legend, even if there’s very little frost at the start of autumn. It’s possible to also read this as an elliptical reference to having an affair with a member of the imperial family.



7. Abe no Nakamaro

ama no hara
furisake mireba
kasuga naru
mikasa no yama ni
ideshi tsuki kamo
    When I look up at
the distant plains of heaven,
    the moon that arose
over Mikasa Mountain
in the shrine of Kasuga!

天の原 ふりさけ見れば 春日なる 三笠の山に 出でし月かも

Nakamaro was sent as a young man to T’ang China to study, where he died 54 years later. Written at a farewell banquet before one of his attempts to return home (he had bad travel luck). Kasuga Shrine, where envoys prayed before departing Japan, is at the foot of Mikasa Mountain near the then-capital Nara.



8. Kisen

waga io wa
miyako no tatsumi
shika zo sumu
yo o ujiyama to
hito wa iu nari
    Thus, yes, do I live
southeast of the capital
    in my hermitage,
yet I hear they call Uji
“hill of those in misery.”

わが庵は 都のたつみ しかぞすむ 世をうぢ山と 人はいふなり

An early 9th century monk; Mt. Uji near Kyoto is now called Mt. Kisen after him. Whether he agrees with people calling it miserable (ushi, in a pivot word pun—the two were spelled the same at the time) is a long-running debate, but that final wa looks contrastive to me. But then, maybe he intended it to be Buddhistly ambiguous—and in the Kokinshu preface, Tsurayuki (#35) does describe the connection between the poem’s beginning and end as “indistinct.” The possibility of reading shika (“thus”) as pivot word also meaning “deer” is also debated.



9. Ono no Komachi

hana no iro wa
utsurinikeri na
itazura ni
waga mi yo ni furu
nagame seshi ma ni
    This flower’s beauty
has faded away it seems
    to no avail
have I spent my time staring
into space at the long rains.

花の色は うつりにけりな いたづらに わが身世にふる ながめせしまに

A legendary beauty and love poet whose genealogy is obscure—she may have been the granddaughter or adoptive daughter of Takamura (#11). This is one of the most famous classical Japanese poems, and one of the most-translated texts of any language: in 1989 an editor found 36 into English alone, which is impressive considering just how many double-meanings Komachi packed into this thing (starting with the beauty/color that can be both the literal flower’s and the speaker’s). The implied context is waiting for a lover who never visited.



10. Semimaru

kore ya kono
yuku mo kaeru mo
wakarete wa
shiru mo shiranu mo
ôsaka no seki
    This, then, is the place—
travelers and returners,
    both unknown strangers
and those who know each other,
parting at Meetinghills Gate.

これやこの 行くも帰るも 別れては 知るも知らぬも 逢坂の関

A semi-legendary hermit who supposedly lived near the Ôsaka (“Meeting Hill”) barrier gate on the road northeast of the capital in Kyoto.



11. Ono no Takamura

wata no hara
yasoshima kakete
kogi-idenu to
hito ni wa tsugeyo
ama no tsuribune
    Tell her, at least,
you boats of the fishermen,
    that I have set out
rowing through the Eighty Isles
across the plain of the sea.

わたの原 八十島かけて こぎ出ぬと 人には告げよ あまのつり舟

Written “to someone in the capital” when Takamura was exiled for a time to Oki Island (off the north coast of Honshu) for refusing to join an embassy to T’ang China. Who the boats are to tell is ambiguous, but given the apparently contrastive wa, a lover seems likely. Eighty Islands is both a name for the Japanese archipelago and a generically large number, and a vague archaic verb (kakete) makes it possible to endlessly debate whether he has set out towards or through them.



12. Henjô

amatsukaze
kumo no kayoiji
fuki-toji yo
otome no sugata
shibashi todomen
    Oh winds of heaven,
blow closed the passage that leads
    into the clouds!
I would detain for a while
these divine maidenly shapes.

天つ風 雲のかよひ路 吹きとぢよ 乙女のすがた しばしとどめむ

Father of Sosei (#21), writing before taking orders while he was still a courtier named Yoshimine no Munesada. The maidens are Gosechi dancers, aristocratic girls portraying heavenly women at the court’s harvest festival; as such, by implying they are real he is indirectly flattering his emperor as much as he is, more directly, the dancers.



13. Emperor Yôzei

tsukuba-ne no
mine yori otsuru
mina no kawa
koi zo tsumorite
fuchi to narinuru
    Like Mina River
tumbling down from the twin peaks
    of Mount Tsukuba,
my love too has collected
and become a deep, still pool.

筑波嶺の 峰より落つる みなの川 恋ぞつもりて 淵となりぬる

Father of Motoyoshi (#20). Written while courting the daughter of Emperor Kôkô (#15) some time after being deposed (in favor of Kôkô) at age 17 for mental instability. Mount Tsukuba has two peaks named Man and Woman, and between them is the source of the Mina, which is written with the kanji for “man” and “woman”; they therefore appear frequently in love poems, despite being in the barbaric far north in what’s now Ibaraki Prefecture.



14. Minamoto no Tôru

michinoku no
shinobu mojizuri
tare yue ni
midare-somenishi
ware naranaku ni
    This shinobu cloth
scatter-patterned with ferns
    in Michiboku—
who has scrambled my feelings
like that? It’s not my fault, so ...

みちのくの しのぶもぢずり 誰故に 乱れそめにし 我ならなくに

A son of Emperor Saga who became an arbiter of taste in his generation, and a possible model for Hikaru Genji in The Tale of Genji. Pivot-words: shinobu = a fern plus a dye pattern made using it / “to secretly long for,” and some = “to dye” / “to begin.” The version in the Kokinshu anthology has a different fourth line from that in One Hundred People and Tales of Ise, changing it from a poem about falling in love to a protestation of faithfulness.



15. Emperor Kôkô

kimi ga tame
haru no no ni idete
wakana tsumu
waga koromode ni
yuki wa furitsutsu
    It was for your sake
that I went in the spring fields
    to pluck these young greens,
and all the while the snowflakes
kept falling on my wide sleeves.

君がため 春の野に出でて 若菜つむ わが衣手に 雪はふりつつ

Grandfather of Muneyuki (#28). Sent with a gift of spring herbs (part of the New Years ceremonies, which in the Chinese lunisolar calendar used at the time usually fell in February) some time before Kôkô’s accession at the age of 54.



16. Ariwara no Yukihira

tachiwakare
inaba no yama no
mine ni ôru
matsu to shi kikaba
ima kaerikon
    I must leave you now
for far Inaba’s mountains,
    peaks covered with pines,
but should I hear that you pine
I will return home at once.

立ち別れ いなばの山の 峰に生ふる まつとしきかば 今かへりこむ

Older brother of Narihira (#17), nephew of Tôru (#14), and cousin of Kôkô (#15). This one has the (in)famous pivot word matsu = “pine tree” / “to wait,” forcing me to use up my lifetime quota of the pines/pining pun. The other pivot word, inaba = province north of Kyoto / auxiliary verb meaning “when go,” is more interesting.



17. Ariwara no Narihira

chihayaburu
kami yo mo kikazu
tatsutagawa
karakurenai ni
mizu kukuru to wa
    Unheard of even
in the age of the great gods:
    with the autumn leaves,
Tatsuta River tie-dyes
its waters Chinese crimson.

千早ぶる 神代もきかず 龍田川 からくれないに 水くくるとは

Younger brother of Yukihira (#16), and so nephew et cet. Narihira’s amorous adventures were thinly fictionalized in the Tales of Ise. “Leaves” is one of those words, so common in classical Japanese poetry, that is omitted but essential to understanding what’s going on. There is also a grammatical inversion (in normal sentence order, the first two lines would go last) and the oddity that the verb for tie-dyeing is in a reflexive form.



18. Fujiwara no Toshiyuki

suminoe no
kishi ni yoru nami
yoru sae ya
yume no kayoiji
hitome yokuramu
    Approaching the shore
of the Bay of Sumi—waves
    even at night
not on the path of dreams—you
avoiding the eyes of others ... ?

住の江の 岸による波 よるさへや 夢の通ひ路 人目よくらむ

Shifty shoals of syntax ahoy: “not” and “you” are more omitted-but-needed-for-understanding words, and the original third line (matching mine) can be read with either the lines before or after it. Sumi Bay, near what’s now Osaka, was famous for its pines, thus making it (via the same pun as in #16) a location where poetic lovers often wait. It’s possible to read the waves as symbols of public opinion, thus linking the two juxtaposed images.



19. Ise

naniwagata
mijikaki ashi no
fushi no ma mo
awade kono yo o
sugushiteyo to ya
    To pass through this life
not meeting even for a time
    as short as the joints
of reeds on Naniwa’s shore—
is that what you are saying?

難波潟 みじかき芦の ふしのまも あはでこの世を 過ぐしてよとや

Another of Japanese poetry’s famous female lovers, all of whom seem to be masters of elegant sarcasm. This one became a consort of Emperor Uda; her use-name comes from her father, a governor of Ise Province (modern Mie Prefecture). Ma can be both a period of time and an extent of space, so the comparison makes a little more sense in Japanese. Naniwa was a harbor in what’s now Osaka Bay. “Saying” is another omitted-but-understood word—it seems to have washed out with the tide, leaving behind only its quotation marker to.



20. Prince Motoyoshi

wabinureba
ima hata onaji
naniwa naru
mi o tsukushite mo
awan to zo omou
    As bad as things are,
it’s all the same to me now—
    I shall still meet you
even if I am ruined
like Naniwa’s channel marks.

わびぬれば 今はた同じ 難波なる 身をつくしても 逢はむとぞ思ふ

Son of Yôsei (#13), writing to another consort of Emperor Uda after their affair had come to light. The marks were wooden stakes, which wear out easily. In addition to the pivot word miotsukushi = “channel marker” / mi o tsukishite = “destroying oneself,” it’s also possible to take the na of Naniwa as a pivot with the second meaning “name,” meaning it’s a reputation (either hers or his own) he’s willing ruin rather than his life—and other double-readings are can be found, so that critics since even before Teika have debated interpretations. Whether life or rep, I take it to be his he is risking, though privately I still worry about her safety.



21. Sosei

ima komu to
iishi bakari ni
nagatsuki no
ariake no tsuki o
machi-idetsuru kana
    Just because you said
that you would come at once
    I waited all night,
but by dawn all that appeared
was the moon of the Long Month.

今来むと いひしばかりに 長月の 有明の月を 待ち出でつるかな

Son of Henjô (#12), and like his father better known by his religious name than his lay name, Yoshimine no Harutoshi. The “Long Month” (nagatsuki) was a name for the Ninth Month of the former lunisolar calendar—the moon-viewing month, because moon was supposed to linger in the sky for longer. The poem is sometimes read as the speaker has instead been waiting for long months.



22. Fun’ya no Yasuhide

fuku kara ni
aki no kusaki no
shiorureba
mube yamakaze o
arashi to iuran
    As soon as it blows,
the autumn trees and grasses
    instantly wither—
that must be, yes, why they call
this mountain wind “furious.”

吹くからに 秋の草木の しをるれば むべ山風を あらしといふらむ

Father of Asayasu (#37). The poem is built on a mostly untranslatable kanji pun: arashi (“tempest”) comes from arasu, meaning to lay waste/devastate, but is written not with that word’s kanji but one that’s a compound of mountain wind. “Furious” was the closest synonym with a destructive root I could find.



23. Ôe no Chisato

tsuki mireba
chiji ni mono koso
kanashikere
waga mi hitotsu no
aki ni wa aranedo
    When I see the moon
I’m filled with many thousands
    of sorrowful thoughts,
even though it’s not for me
alone that autumn exists.

月見れば 千々に物こそ 悲しけれ わが身ひとつの 秋にはあらねど

Nephew of Yukihira (#16) and Narihira (#17). Another grammatically inverted poem—in normal sentence order, the last two lines would go first.



24. Sugawara no Michizane

kono tabi wa
nusa mo toriaezu
tamukeyama
momiji no nishiki
kami no manimani
    At Offering Hill,
where I couldn’t offer prayer strips
    for this journey now,
a brocade of autumn leaves—
may the gods find them pleasing.

このたびは 幣もとりあへず 手向山 紅葉のにしき 神のまにまに

Written on the occasion of a journey of retired Emperor Uda by a high-ranking minister who knew a thing or two about flattery. Michizane was also a leading scholar of his generation and later deified as a god of calligraphy and patron of exam-takers.



25. Fujiwara no Sadakata

na ni shi owaba
ôsakayama no
sanekazura
hito ni shirarede
kuru yoshi mogana
    Sleep-Together Vine
met on Osaka Mountain,
    if you were well-named
I’d have my wished-for way
to draw her secretly here.

名にしおはば 逢坂山の さねかづら 人にしられで くるよしもがな

The first part of Osaka, written ausaka at the time, does pivoty double-duty as au, “to meet.” When sane is detached from the vine’s name, sanekazura, it can mean sleeping together. “Her” is unstated but heavily implied by those puns. Japanese lovers worried a lot about secrecy and the loss of reputation that came with revelation. Would that more worried about being too clever by half.



26. Fujiwara no Tadahira

ogurayama
mine no momijiba
kokoro araba
ima hitotabi no
miyuki matanan
    You autumn-bright leaves
on Ogura Mountain’s slopes—
    if you had a heart,
this once, you would wait to fall
until the Emperor comes.

小倉山 峰のもみじ葉 心あらば 今ひとたびの みゆきまたなむ

Uncle of Atsutada (#43), grandfather of Koretada (#45), and great-grandfather of Sanekata (#51) and of Kintô (#55), to name only his most immediate connections among the One Hundred People. Written as prime minister at the behest of retired Emperor Uda to invite to his son, reigning Emperor Daigo, to join him on another journey. Another omitted-but-understood word: “to fall.”



27. Fujiwara no Kanesuke

mika no hara
wakite nagaruru
izumigawa
itsu miki tote ka
koishikaruran
    Water gushes forth
from Mika Plain and flows off
    as When-See River—
When did I ever See you
that such passions flow in me?

みかの原 わきてながるる 泉川 いつ見きとてか 恋しかるらむ

Grandfather of Murasaki Shikibu (#57). Apparently Teika thought the pun of Izumi (name of a river near Osaka) with itsu mi (“when see”) a good one, as he picked this not just for One Hundred People but also the Shinkokinshu anthology. I’m not convinced, though to be fair the words were written identically at the time.



28. Minamoto no Muneyuki

yama-zato wa
fuyu zo sabishisa
masarikeru
hitome mo kusa mo
karenu to omoeba
    The mountain village
grows ever more desolate
    in the wintertime—
knowing that people are gone,
that the grasses have withered.

山里は 冬ぞさびしさ まさりける 人めも草も かれぬとおもへば

Grandson of Kôkô (#15). Another with inverted word order, here mimicked by my fragmentary final clause. The zeugmistic pivot word karenu means “be far off” when the subject is people (literally, “eyes of men”) and “wither” when it’s grass. That we all wither like the grass is the intended overtone.



29. Oshikochi no Mitsune

kokoro-ate ni
oraba ya oran
hatsushimo no
okimadowaseru
shiragiku no hana
    To pick one at all,
I must pick it at random,
    for autumn’s first frost
has camouflaged which of these
are the white chrysanthemums.

心あてに 折らばや折らむ 初霜の おきまどはせる 白菊の花

Finding the white mums was important because those were used as altar offerings.



30. Mibu no Tadamine

ariake no
tsurenaku mieshi
wakare yori
akatsuki bakari
uki mono wa nashi
    Since that cold parting
under a setting full moon,
    so indifferent,
there is nothing that seems as
melancholy as the dawn.

有明の つれなくみえし 別れより 暁ばかり うきものはなし

Father of Tadami (#41). This has long been praised as one of the best poems of the Kokinshu. The moon is not explicit—ariake is dawn on the 16th night of the lunar month, just after full, when the moon would be setting. Uki (more commonly ui) can refer to anything along the spectrum of sad/unhappy/gloomy/depressing/anxious; one Japanese commentary colorfully glosses it as do-kororo o kurushimeru (“totally torments my heart”), which is a bit over-the-top for a poem Teika described as full of yoen (“ethereal beauty”).



31. Sakanoue no Korenori

asaborake
ariake no tsuki to
miru made ni
yoshino no sato ni
fureru shirayuki
    At the break of day,
it almost looks as if
    it were the moonlight—
the white snow falling over
the village of Yoshino.

朝ぼらけ 有明の月と みるまでに 吉野の里に ふれる白雪

An example of the “elegant confusion” of sensory impressions that early Heian poets picked up from Chinese poetry.



32. Harumichi no Tsuraki

yamakawa ni
kaze no kaketaru
shigarami wa
nagare mo aenu
momiji narikeri
    In the mountain stream
the wind has built up a weir
    like those for fishing,
and not even autumn leaves
can flow past on the current.

山川に 風のかけたる しがらみは 流れもあへぬ 紅葉なりけり

(I got nothing.)



33. Ki no Tomonori

hisakata no
hikari nodokeki
haru no hi ni
shizukokoro naku
hana no chiruran
    From the wide heavens
the gentle light shines down,
    so on this spring day
why do the cherry blossoms
scatter with such restless hearts?

久方の 光のどけき 春の日に しづ心なく 花のちるらむ

Cousin of Tsuriyaki (#35). Hisakata no is a untranslatable stock epithet applied to things that come from the sky, possibly related to hisoi (“broad”). The type of flowers is unstated, but this is placed among other poems about cherry blossoms in the Kokinshu, which Tomonori helped edit.



34. Fujiwara no Okikaze

tare o ka mo
shiru hito ni sen
takasago no
matsu mo mukashi no
tomo naranaku ni
    So who now can be
my longtime companion?
    Despite their great age,
even Takasago’s pines
cannot be my friends of old.

誰をかも 知る人にせむ 高砂の 松もむかしの 友ならなくに

The lore of Takasago (in modern Hyogo Prefecture) includes a story of an old loving couple who were turned into pine trees when they died. Given this and that shiru hito (“companion,” literally “known person”) and tomo (“friend”) could be either singular or plural, it’s possible to read this as mourning a dead spouse instead of absent friends.



35. Ki no Tsurayuki

hito wa isa
kokoro mo shirazu
furusato wa
hana zo mukashi no
ka ni nioikeru
    What goes on inside
human hearts cannot be known,
    but in my home town
the plum blossoms still give off
the same perfume as of old.

人はいさ 心も知らず ふるさとは 花ぞむかしの 香に匂ひける

Cousin of Tomonori (#33). The original is just “flower,” but the headnote in the Kokinshu says he recited it with a spray of plum blossoms, and since he was the principal editor, plum in translation it is.



36. Kiyowara no Fukayabu

natsu no yo wa
mada yoi nagara
akenuru o
kumo no izuku ni
tsuki yadoruramu
    On those summer nights
when it still seems late evening
    but then it is dawn,
I wonder where within the clouds
the moon finds a place to sleep ...

夏の夜は まだ宵ながら 明けぬるを 雲のいづくに 月やどるらむ

Grandfather (or possibly father) of Motosuke (#42). The conceit is that, what with summer nights being so short, the moon seems to not have time to cross the whole sky so must instead be setting (“lodging”) behind a cloud.



37. Fun’ya no Asayasu

shiratsuyu o
kaze no fukishiku
aki no no wa
tsuranuki tomenu
tama zo chirikeru
    In the autumn fields
blown by the gusty winds,
    the white drops of dew
scatter everywhere like pearls
from a broken necklace.

白露を 風のふきしく 秋の野は つらぬきとめぬ 玉ぞちりける

Son of Yasuhide (#22).



38. Ukon

wasuraruru
mi o ba omowazu
chikaite shi
hito no inochi no
oshiku mo aru kana
    I am forsaken,
but I don’t care for myself—
    he vowed on the gods
and I can only fear for
the life of that forsworn man.

忘らるる 身をば思はず 誓ひてし 人の命の 惜しくもあるかな

Ukon’s use-name comes from a title of her father’s.



39. Minamoto no Hitoshi

asajiu no
ono no shinohara
shinoburedo
amarite nado ka
hito no koishiki
    Like the bamboo grass
hidden in a reed meadow,
    I loved in secret—
so why now is it too much,
this excess of longing for her?

浅茅生の 小野の篠原 忍ぶれど あまりてなどか 人の恋しき

“Like” is not explicit, but a comparison seems the best way to handle these sorts of otherwise tangential prefatory lines, especially when they are metaphorically appropriate.



40. Taira no Kanemori

shinoburedo
iro ni idenikeri
waga koi wa
mono ya omou to
hito no tou made
    I love in secret,
but my longing must now be
    showing in my face—
“What are you thinking about?”
someone has even asked me.

忍ぶれど 色に出でにけり わが恋は 物や思ふと 人の問ふまで

Father of Akazome Emon (#59). This poem tied with #41 in a poetry contest, but won on an appeal to the emperor. This time, the grammatical inversion of the original is reflected in my last two lines.



41. Mibu no Tadami

koisu chô
waga na wa madaki
tachinikeri
hito shirezu koso
omoisomeshika
    And so I find that
I’m already being called
    a person in love—
although I let no one know
I’ve started to feel this way.

恋すてふ 我が名はまだき 立ちにけり 人しれずこそ 思ひそめしか

Son of Tadamine (#30).



42. Kiyowara no Motosuke

chigiriki na
katami ni sode o
shiboritsutsu
sue no matsuyama
nami kosaji to wa
    We promised! —while we
both repeatedly wrung out
    our tear-sodden sleeves,
that the waves would never cross
Matsu Mountain in Sue ...

ちぎりきな かたみに袖を しぼりつつ 末の松山 波こさじとは

Grandson (or son) of Fukayabu (#36) and father of Sei Shônagon (#62). Written for a friend to send to a woman “who had changed her mind.” Sleeves were used to dab one’s tears, there being no modern handkerchiefs, and a wet sleeve was a conventional metonymy for a broken heart. The thing about the waves is a witty reference to an earlier poem in which lovers promise to stay true until that happened, which quickly became a cliche.



43. Fujiwara no Atsutada

aimite no
nochi no kokoro ni
kurabureba
mukashi wa mono o
omowazarikeri
    After meeting you
if I compare my feelings
    with those from before,
I realize now my heart then
was barely even troubled.

逢ひ見ての 後の心に くらぶれば むかしは物を 思はざりけり

Nephew of Tadahira (#26). Aimite (“meeting”) has the connotation of a tryst.



44. Fujiwara no Asatada

au koto no
taete shi naku wa
nakanaka ni
hito o mo mi o mo
uramizaramashi
    On the contrary,
were we to never again
    meet each other,
then I would no longer feel
bitter about her—or myself.

逢ふことの 絶えてしなくは 中々に 人をも身をも 恨みざらまし

Son of Sadataka (#25). Urami is another broad-spectrum emotion word, meaning anywhere in the range regret/resent/blame/grudge/bitterness/malice/hatred. What’s resented is not specified—the traditional interpretation is the other person’s coldness and his own pain, but it reads to me as he blames his own behavior as much as hers.



45. Fujiwara no Koretada

aware to mo
iu beki hito wa
omooede
mi no itazura ni
narinu beki kana
    I don’t think there is
anyone so moved they must
    call me “pitiful”—
it surely must be pointless
for me to continue on.

あはれとも いふべき人は 思ほえで 身のいたづらに なりぬべきかな

Koretada (or Koremasa) was a grandson of Tadahira (#26) and father of Yoshitaka (#50). I have trouble giving this a sympathetic reading—possibly there’s some witty over-the-topness that I’m missing. Itazura ni naru (“become useless”) was a poetic cliche for “die of disappointed love.”



46. Sone no Yoshitada

yura no to o
wataru funabito
kaji o tae
yukue mo shiranu
koi no michi kana
    Much like a boatman
who loses his sculling oar
    crossing Yura Straight,
I have also lost my way,
ah me, on the path of love.

由良のとを わたる舟人 かぢをたえ 行く方もしらぬ 恋の道かな

It’s not clear whether this is the better-known Yura in what is now Wakayama Prefecture or a Yura in Tango Province (now northern Kyoto Prefecture) where Yoshitada was a minor official. In the orthography of the time, it is possible to read the boatman as either losing his oar (o as direct object marker) or breaking the cord (wo as archaic noun) that holds it in the lock. The former is the standard interpretation.



47. Egyô

yaemugura
shigereru yado no
sabishiki ni
hito koso miene
aki wa kinikeri
    In the loneliness
of this residence that is
    overgrown with vines,
not a person can be seen—
only the autumn has come.

八重むぐら しげれる宿の さびしきに 人こそ見えね 秋は来にけり

A monk writing on the subject “autumn comes to the dilapidated house.” The house is usually taken to be where it was written, a mansion built over a century before by Tôru (#14), even though it was actively inhabited by a descendant of Tôru’s who held poetry parties. The mugura creepers are literally “eight-layered,” another example of eight being generically many.



48. Minamoto no Shigeyuki

kaze o itami
iwa utsu nami no
onore nomi
kudakete mono o
omou koro kana
    Like the waves beaten
against the rocks by fierce winds,
    so am I alone
broken apart by the pain
those times I think about her!

風をいたみ 岩うつ波の おのれのみ くだけて物を おもふ頃かな

Soundwise, the original is absolutely lovely, with its repeated mi and mo and no syllables. The mono he thinks about more commonly means “things” but can also refer to a person, and clearly he means to it be All About Her.



49. Onakatomi no Yoshinobu

mikakimori
eji no taku hi no
yoru wa moe
hiru wa kietsutsu
mono o koso omoe
    Like the watchfires lit
by Imperial Palace guards,
    burning through the night,
going out day after day—
so are my longings for her.

みかき守 衛士のたく火の 夜はもえ 昼は消えつつ 物をこそおもへ

Grandfather of Ise no Tayû (#61). Another one where the mono thought about obviously means his lover. However, no one is clear just what he’s getting at by saying the fires/feelings keep “going out” by day.



50. Fujiwara no Yoshitaka

kimi ga tame
oshikarazarishi
inochi sae
nagaku mogana to
omoikeru kana
    Even this poor life
that once I would not have been
    sorry to have lost,
now for your sake I can
only wish that it last long.

君がため 惜しからざりし 命さへ ながくもがなと おもひけるかな

Son of Koretada (#45). Written as a morning-after poem. Why he once valued his life so little is long-debated—the most common reading is that he would have given his life to see her, but despair he couldn’t see her seems more likely to me. It’s also possible to read it as saying he has recovered from being in love.





Continued in part 2.


(Index for this project)

One Hundred People, One Poem Each

Date: 14 September 2010 05:18 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] pingback-bot.livejournal.com
User [livejournal.com profile] prettygoodpoet referenced to your post from One Hundred People, One Poem Each (http://syndicated.livejournal.com/prettygoodpoet/27647.html) saying: [...] song     then passes off stage, leaving behind a few leaves that outlive cherry blossoms. —27 February-3 March 2010 Which is by way of saying, I've posted my complete translations of One Hundred People, One Poem Each what's I've been nattering on about: part 1 [...]
(deleted comment)

Moon

Date: 15 June 2016 12:18 am (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Hi,

I see that the "moon" was often used for Hyakunin isshu. May I ask what does the meaning of the moon or what do they want to described whenever they use the moon for their poem?

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