One Hundred People, One Poem Each (part 1)

[larryhammer]

(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)

Comments

One Hundred People, One Poem Each

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User 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 [...]

[larryhammer]

そうですな、公平性ほうが知恵より重要であります

Moon

[(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?

Re: Moon

[larryhammer]

Most of the time, the poet uses the same word as the modern one for the moon, tsuki (月), and the speaker is either looking at the moon in the sky or seeing the world by moonlight. When do that, typically they are trying to evoke a feeling associated with either the faint light or the passage of time -- exactly what depends on the poem.