Kokinshu Book IVa: Autumn 1 (169-200)

[larryhammer]

While the two autumn books of the Kokinshu are as long as those of spring, their contents are more varied, especially in this first one: in contrast to the dominance of cherry blossoms, there are more things that remind poets of the world's transience -- winds, stars, mists, cold dew, changing leaves, barren trees, migrating geese, belling stags, late flowers. In all fairness, the dying year does evoke the melancholy of mono no aware more naturally than the blossoming spring -- "summer is over and gone, over and gone, over and gone," indeed. Regardless, with this variety, we get more varied responses (including far too much "cleverness" based on plant names).

But speaking of crickets, add to this project's bibliography Lafcadio Hearn's essay "Insect-Musicians" from his collection Exotics and Retrospectives. The focus is on those sold as pets in Tokyo in the 1890s, but along the way he gives a valuable rundown of all the varieties and their cultural associations. Because like everything else insects, even the cheerful chirpers, also trigger loneliness. 'Tis the season.

169.  Fujiwara no Toshiyuki Written the day autumn started.
aki kinu to me ni wa sayaka ni mienudomo kaze no oto ni zo odorokarenuru	Although to the eye it cannot clearly be seen     that autumn has come, still I find myself surprised by the whisper of the breeze.
Toshiyuki (c.830–901 or 907) held various middling court offices from 866 to 897, ending as a captain of the imperial guard. His mother was another daughter of Ki no Natora, making him maternal cousin of princes Tsuneyasu and Koretada. He has 19 poems in the Kokinshu. ¶ And right on the heels of a poem written the last day of summer, one from the first day of autumn -- being the beginning of the Seventh Month, which fell roughly early-August. The surprise carries over into the next few poems. This is quite lovely in the original, enough so to warrant changing the literal "sound of wind" to "whisper of breeze" purely for the effect.
170.  Ki no Tsurayuki Written when he accompanied some court officials on an excursion to the Kamo River bank on the day autumn started.
kawakaze no suzushiku mo aru ka uchiyosuru nami to tomo ni ya aki wa tatsuramu	In the river wind there is a refreshing chill.     Might it be autumn is approaching together with the waves rippling onto shore?
Tsurayuki again takes the second slot of an important season. The Kamo flows just east of the capital, and he "accompanied" the party as a subordinate (compare #161). Tatsu means "rise" for the waves and "start" for autumn, and for once I managed to double the meanings in a single English word, partly by borrowing from the verb for the waves's movement.
171.  Author unknown Topic unknown.
waga seko ga koromo no suso o fuki-kaeshi uramezurashiki aki no hatsukaze	An inside lining -- the fluttering of the hem     of my husband's robe! How enticing they are, the first breezes of autumn.
Pivot-word: ura = "reverse"/"lining" / uramezurashii = "enticing"/"creating curiosity." I displaced the lining to the start for the rhythm and to bring out more clearly the "reasoning technique" of deducing cause from observed effect. The man is not necessarily married to the speaker, but the alternative of "darling" isn't gendered. Compare #25, which may be riffing on this.
172.  (Author unknown) (Topic unknown.)
kinô koso sanae torishika itsu no ma ni inaba soyogite akikaze no fuku	Only yesterday we transplanted the seedlings.     All of a sudden the rice leaves are rustling and the autumn winds blowing.
"Rustling" is not a perfect translation, as it can imply drier leaves than soyogu's susurration, but it's the closest English equivalent. Compare the timeslip to #116.
173.  (Author unknown) (Topic unknown.)
akikaze no fukinishi hi yori hisakata no ama no kawara ni tatanu hi wa nashi	Ever since the day I felt the autumn winds blow,     there's been not one day I haven't stood on the bank of Heaven's Endless River.
The first of a series of 11 poems about Tanabata, a festival imported from China celebrating the one day a year the Oxherd (the star Altair) is allowed a conjugal visit with the Weaver Maid (Vega), separated from him by the River of Heaven (Milky Way). At the time, the Seventh Day of the Seventh Month fell some time in August, and so was more naturally thought of as an early autumn event than the modern July 7th observance. This could be spoken by either party of the story, but given the Weaver Maid waits to be visited this is often heard as her voice. Compare the location and anticipation with #170.
174.  (Author unknown) (Topic unknown.)
hisakata no ama no kawara no watashimori kimi watarinaba kaji kakushite yo	O ferryboatman on the bank of the Endless     River of Heaven, if my lord has crossed over, keep your oar hidden away!
The first two lines of the original (my l.2-3) are almost the same as #173.3-4 (my last line and a half), and now the speaker is explicitly the Weaver Maid. How the Oxherd crosses the River comes in many variations: here it's by boat, but in other stories it's a bridge of autumn leaves or (most romantically) magpie wings.
175.  (Author unknown) (Topic unknown.)
ama (no) kawa momiji o hashi ni wataseba ya tanabatatsume no aki o shimo matsu	River of Heaven, is it because it lays down     a bridge of red leaves that the Weaver Maid awaits the arrival of autumn?
And from a heavenly perspective we swoop down to earth, with a poem especially admired for its romantic tone. Ama no kawa ("River of Heaven," now without its banks) is another key 5-syllable phrase often appearing without a case-marker; here it can only be address or possibly exclamation, as autumn and the leaves are subject and direct object of the transitive watasu ("to span," rendered here as "lays down"). My justification for the interpretive "the arrival of" is how emphatically the autumn being waited for is marked. Note this first mention of autumn leaves -- here written with kanji meaning "crimson leaf," but the term encompassed all the colors of the season.
176.  (Author unknown) (Topic unknown.)
koikoite au yo wa koyoi ama no kawa kiri tachi-watari akezu mo aranamu	Desperately longed for, the night we meet is tonight.     River of Heaven, may the mists envelop you so that daybreak never comes.
Back up to heaven; while either party could be speaking, I'm inclined to hear the Weaver Maid's voice again. Kiri ("mist") is the autumnal counterpart of vernal kasume (see #3n), of which more anon. I am unreasonably fond of the line au yo wa koyoi, "the night we meet (is) tonight."
177.  Ki no Tomonori Written for another when, in the Kanpyô Era, the Emperor [Uda] commanded the courtiers to present poems on the night of the Seventh.
ama (no) kawa asase shiranami tadoritsutsu watari-hateneba ake zo shinikeru	Constantly searching the white waves in the shallows     of Heaven's River, he didn't know how to cross when daybreak had, yes, begun.
On the one hand, this is about the Oxherd searching for a way across; on the other, it's also about the man Tomonori is pinch-hitting for, whom he implies searched all night for something to write but also failed. This secondary meaning suggests reading this pronounless poem as as third-person instead of first, returning to a terrestrial point-of-view. Pivot-word: shiranami is "white wave" but can also be read as "not knowing." In some Tanabata stories, the Oxherd cannot cross the Milky Way if the sky is overcast, and the whitecaps may represent such clouds.
178.  Fujiwara no Okikaze A poem from the poetry contest held in the palace of the consort in the same era.
chigirikemu kokoro zo tsuraki tanabata no toshi ni hitotabi au wa au ka wa	It is cold indeed, a heart that could promise that:     is meeting but once a year on Tanabata really a meeting at all?
Back to purely earthbound speculation. I cannot help thinking this isn't really a Tanabata poem but rather using the story's trappings to accuse the speaker's lover. Either way, though, it doesn't work for me because it's blaming the victim: meeting one night a year isn't the idea of either the Weaver Maid or the Oxherd, but a punishment from her grandfather, the Emperor of Heaven, for shirking her weaving for love. "But," "really," and "at all" are rhetorical rather than literal, from the question being marked as expecting a negative answer.
179.  Ôshikôchi no Mitsune Written the night of the Seventh.
toshi-goto ni au to wa suredo tanabata no nuru yo no kazu zo sukunakarikeru	Although it is true that they meet every year     on Tanabata, the nights they sleep together are indeed few in number.
I may be missing something, but the wit here sounds to me just as weak in Japanese as does in English. Technicalities: "on Tanabata" more properly belongs to the second clause but it sounds more natural in English to move it up, and "together" is another of those omitted-but-understood words.
180.  (Ôshikôchi no Mitsune) (Written the night of the Seventh.)
tanabata ni kashitsuru ito no uchi-haete toshi no o nagaku koi ya wataramu	These threads we offer for Tanabata ever     continue onward -- will their love extend like that the length of the cord of years?
On Tanabata, young women gave offerings of thread to the Weaver Maid in return for skill at working with it. As such, I understand the speaker as one of them speculating about the celestial affair, but it could be read as a single person talking about his/her own love, with the offering done by another and the festival as metaphoric dressing. The action of the middle line uchihaete ("keeps continuing, and") applies both to the thread above it and the years below; I made the resulting implicit comparison explicit.
181.  Sosei Topic unknown.
koyoi komu hito ni wa awaji tanabata no hisashiki hodo ni machi mo koso sure	No, I shall not meet the man who might come tonight,     lest I also would then have to wait as long as the next Tanabata.
Written in a female persona using the story of Orihime to comment on "her" own relationship -- the implied point being "as above, so below." The conjunction of consequence (here "lest") is another omitted-but-understood word, while "next" is my interpretation.
182.  Minamoto no Muneyuki Written at dawn on the night of the Seventh.
ima wa tote wakaruru toki wa ama (no) kawa wataranu saki ni sode zo hichinuru	Because "It is now" -- in this time of separation,     though I haven't yet crossed the River of Heaven, my sleeves are already soaked.
The conceit being that the Oxherd is crying into his sleeves in the approved courtly manner, getting them wet even before the river splashes them (presumably on the ferry). Technically "(it is) now" is not directly quoted, but I treat it as a farewell comparable to sayonara, lit. "since (it's) thus," to highlight the pathos. Lost in translation: the soundplay of wakaru ("separate") and wataru ("cross").
183.  Mibu no Tadamine Written on the Eighth.
kyô yori wa ima komu toshi no kinô o zo itsu shika to nomi machiwatarubeki	So starting today I must wait impatiently     though the entire year that is now to come for yesterday's Tanabata.
The arc rounds out with a morning-after poem from the Oxherd, de rigueur in court circles after a tryst -- and of course, "as below, so above." More literally, it's "await the yesterday of the year to come," but it flows better for the clarification of "Tanabata."
184.  Author unknown Topic unknown.
ko no ma yori mori-kuru tsuki no kage mireba kokorozukushi no aki wa kinikeri	When I see moonlight filtering through the spaces     between the bare trees, I realize it has come, the melancholy autumn.
This appears in Ono no Komachi's collected poetry, but the attribution is doubtful, as that was compiled some generations after her death, and this reads nothing like her other poems in anything but emotional tone. Sequencewise, now that we are over the surprise arrival of autumn, it it time to sorrow over it. Melancholy sparked by barren branches is a common trope in Chinese poetry; the Japanese borrowed the seasonal response but largely transferred the stimulus to the changing leaves, which were rarely mentioned in Chinese poems. That the trees here are "bare" is not in the original but implied by the gaps.
185.  (Author unknown) (Topic unknown.)
ôkata no aki kuru kara ni waga mi koso kanashiki mono to omoishirinuru	The moment autumn has arrived all about us,     I realize that it is indeed myself who's the melancholy one.
According to one edition, this is Ôe no Chisato's adaptation of a verse by Po Chü-i/Bai Juyi, but I haven't found a copy of his Kudai waka to confirm this. The placement between the previous and following poems makes me think the implied contrast is with the season (as opposed to other people) not being sad, but the text is ambiguous. I tried to bring out this interpretation out by alliterating on m (matching initial ka- on the equivalent words).
186.  (Author unknown) (Topic unknown.)
waga tame ni kuru aki ni shimo aranaku ni mushi no ne kikeba mazu zo kanashiki	It's not for my sake alone that autumn arrives,     but nevertheless when I hear sounds of insects, it is I who sorrows first.
Here the contrast is explicitly with other people. The sound of insects, especially crickets chirping, is another poetic symbol of autumn (delved into more deeply starting with #196).
187.  (Author unknown) (Topic unknown.)
mono-goto ni aki zo kanashiki momijitsutsu utsuroi-yuku o kagiri to omoeba	Autumn is indeed in every way sorrowful     -- for we're aware that in the constantly changing fading colors is the end.
Sequence-wise, this anticipates the leaves' disappearance by quite a ways, but makes for a concise summary of why the pretty colors sadden. Whether what's mourned is the end of the leaves or season is left deliberately vague since it is, of course, both. The original has an inverted sentence order: the first two lines would normally go after the end.
188.  (Author unknown) (Topic unknown.)
hitori nuru toko wa kusaba ni aranedomo aki kuru yoi wa tsuyukekarikeri	Even though the bed where I lie down alone     is not made of grass, when the autumn evening comes it is soaked through with the dew.
To sleep on grass, especially a grass pillow, was a common metonymy for traveling, and we are to understand the "dew" is probably tears -- though whether because of the season, as the poem's placement suggests, or a separation is left open. Note the shift to considering autumnal nights.
189.  (Author unknown) A poem from the poetry contest at the house of Prince Koresada.
itsu wa to wa toki wa wakanedo aki no yo zo mono omou koto no kagiri narikeru	Although it can be any time we feel this way,     the autumn nights are, I find, the culmination of my brooding upon things.
Koresada (d. c.903), a son of Emperor Kôkô (see #21), hosted the contest in 893 or shortly before. The topic seems to have specifically been autumn, as the 23 poems in the Kokinshu taken from it all refer to the season. While it may seem odd that the editors (most of whom participated) wouldn't know the author, this was a so-called "desk" competition with poems submitted in writing beforehand, rather than an in-person recital against a member of the other team, poetry-slam style. The highly idiomatic opening is rendered freely.
190.  Ôshikôchi no Mistune Written while people gathered in the Kannari-no-Tsubo were writing poems regretting autumn nights.
kaku bakari oshi to omou yo o itazura ni nete akasuramu hito sae zo uki	They're detestable, those people who'd uselessly     sleep through until dawn those nights that I consider entirely precious.
The Kannari-no-Tsubo ("thunder court") was a building in the northwest corner of the imperial compound edited: next to that was part of the women's quarters -- one wonders if he had a lover listening in. To make something coherent, I had to reverse the sentence order (in the original, his delight in night come first, then the sleeping people, then his detestation) and treat akasu, "to pass (time)," as something of a pun on akeru, "to dawn," (they're written with the same kanji) by double-translating it a la a pivot-word.
191.  Author unknown Topic unknown.
shirokumo ni hane uchikawashi tobu kari no kazu sae miyuru aki no yo no tsuki	Across the white clouds, wings in line upon line,     wild geese are flying -- you can even count them in this autumn night's moon.
The moon is the Eighth Month's full moon, which in the lunisolar calendar fell in September or earliest October, the occasion of Tsukimi or the Moon Viewing Festival -- and subject of the next few poems. Sequencewise, this jumps a little ahead in time, as the geese (the same that flew north in #30) don't start arriving south for the winter in #206. Grammatically, this is a long noun-phrase headed by and describing "moon," but the order of images is more important to the effect than keeping the syntax as smooth as the original. All in all, a lovely poem, one that forced me to break form and shorten all long lines a syllable to match its grace.
192.  (Author unknown) (Topic unknown.)
sayonaka to yo wa fukenurashi kari ga ne no kikoyuru sora ni tsuki wataru miyu	It seems that the night has deepened into midnight:     a wild goose's call can be heard in the sky where the moon appears overhead.
Although the Kokinshu prefaces claim the editors followed the directive to collect poems not in the Man'yoshu, compiled 150 years before, this poem is also found there (IX:1701, part of a collection dubiously attributed to Kakinomoto no Hitomaro). Oops. Technically, it says the moon is seen in a sky where a goose can be heard, but reversing this maintains the image order. I went with a single goose match the loneliness of the wee small hours of the morning.
193.  Ôe no Chisato A poem from the poetry contest at the house of Prince Koresada.
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.
In normal sentence order, the last two lines would go first. In sound and rhythm, the original is almost pitch-perfect.
194.  Mibu no Tadamine (from the same contest)
hisakata no tsuki no katsura mo aki wa nao momiji sureba ya teri-masaruramu	The eternal moon -- it is because its cassia     also takes on the colors of autumn leaves that it shines ever brighter?
The tree is called katsura, which ordinarily refers to the Japanese redbud (Cercidiphyllum japonicum) but is also used for cassia (Cinnamomum aromaticum), which in Chinese mythology grows on the moon. This double-meaning is confusing to almost everyone -- including apparently Tadamine, as while the temperate redbud is noted for its autumnal foliage, the tropical cassia neither is deciduous nor grows in Japan. I translated his apparent intent despite the mistaken botany, even though this makes it easier to give a negative answer.
195.  Ariwara no Motokata Written on the moon.
aki no yo no tsuki no hikari shi akakereba kurabu no yama mo koenuberanari	The light of the moon of this night in autumn:     is it because it's so bright that I was able to cross even Mt. Shadows?
For Kurabu, see #39. It was tempting to render its name as Mt. Darkness to highlight how pedestrian a poet Motokata is compared to Tsurayuki.
196.  Fuijwara no Tadafusa On a night he was visiting someone, he heard a cricket's chirping and wrote this.
kirigirisu itaku na naki so aki no yo no nagaki omoi wa ware zo masareru	O cricket, no, do not cry so terribly:     though your sorrows are as long as an autumn night, my own indeed surpass them.
Tadafusa's birth date is unknown but he first appears in court records in 893 and died in 928; he has 4 poems in the Kokinshu. ¶ Kirigirisu is another key 5-syllable noun without a case-marker, but a direct command makes it clear that here it's being addressed -- leaving instead the question of what, exactly, it is. Although today it is the name of a kind of katydid, at the time it meant a cricket, probably either a bell-cricket or pine-cricket, or sometimes generically any autumn-chirping insect. Pivot-word: nagaki is "long" for the night but also nagaki omoi, "long thought," is idiomatically "sorrow" -- the effect is an implicit comparison. Note also the return of the naku = "call" / "weep" pun. Whether the occasion was a visit to a friend or a (would-be?) lover is debated. This starts a series of insect poems, many with some sort of speaker identification; the night setting of this one matches the moon poems, by way of transitioning back to earlier in the season.
197.  Fujiwara no Toshiyuki A poem from the poetry contest at the house of Prince Koresada.
aki no yo no akuru mo shirazu naku mushi wa waga goto mono ya kanashikaruramu	They don't even notice the dawn on this autumn night.     These crying insects -- could it be they are someone as sorrowful as myself?
When night creatures "cry" into daytime, they must really be sad.
198.  Author unknown Topic unknown.
akihagi mo irozukinureba kirigirisu waga nenu goto ya yoru wa kanashiki	Is it because even autumn bush-clovers     have altered their colors that crickets find this night as wretched as I, sleepless, do?
Japanese bush-clover (various species of Lespedeza, in poetry often specifically Lespedeza bicolor) is one of the canonical seven flowers of autumn, blooming in early in the season; its leaves turn colorful later on, meaning we haven't shifted all the way back to the chronological sequence just yet. Note the assumption of, without actually using, the naku = "call"/"weep" pun. My awkward rendering does not do justice to a quite good original.
199.  (Author unknown) (Topic unknown.)
aki no yo wa tsuyu koso koto ni samukarashi kusamura-goto ni mushi no wabureba	On an autumn night it seems it's the dew that is     especially cold -- for insects are lamenting in each and every thicket.
"Lament" (waburu) again implies awareness of the naku = "call"/"weep" pun. Also, inversion there is -- in normal sentence order, the last two lines would go first.
200.  (Author unknown) (Topic unknown.)
kimi shinobu kusa ni yatsururu furusato wa matsumushi no ne zo kanashikarikeru	I remember you, and pine away at the old home     overgrown with fern, where it's the pine-cricket's voice I find the most sorrowful.
This has two or possibly three pivot-words -- the clear ones being shinobu = "to remember" / shinobukusa = hare's-foot fern, which often grows on house eaves, and the first part of matsumushi = "pine cricket" (Xenogryllus marmoratus, link to recording) is matsu = "to wait," which in poetry often has the sense of "to long/pine" for someone (the next three poems all hinge on this pivot-pun). The debatable pivot is yatsuru = "to disappear" / "to waste away," which looks promising if you understand the old home as disappearing under the growth and the speaker as wasting, but it's hard to see how to joint up the syntax. I decided to read this third as more an overtone than outright double-meaning, by rendering the waiting as not just "pining" but "pining away." I understand the speaker as an abandoned woman living in the run-down house she used to share with someone, but it could also be a man waiting/pining outside the house of a former/would-be lover. Either way, there's more than a bit of self-dramatizing going on.

Have I mentioned before that LJ length limits force me to split these posts onto a second scroll?

(Index for this series)

---L.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Wow, these are fascinating.

[larryhammer]

Ain't they tho'. This may be my favorite book of the collection so far.

---L.