Kokinshu Book VII: Congratulations (343-364)

[larryhammer]

After the seasons of the year, celebrations of years: book VII contains poems expressing wishes for good fortune at coronations, important birthdays in the sense both of years that are multiples of 10 and of important people, and the like. Given such public occasions, the genre is very formalized, with a uniformly elevated tone and a limited palette of acceptable images. Fortunately, it's the second-shortest book of the Kokinshu, so the tedium of stiff felicitations to people one doesn't know (and don't care about) is relatively brief. I can hope, however, that there's a few bits of human interest and cultural details to keep your attention.

If it feels like I'm underselling this, I'll fess up: it *is* my least-favorite book of the Kokinshu. Book X is often slighted but I actually like it, though we'll see how good I'll be at translating the word games. But first this one:

343.  Author unknown Topic unknown.
waga kimi wa chiyo ni yachiyo ni sazareishi no iwao to narite koke no musu made	My lord, may it be for a thousand ages,     eight thousand ages -- until a pebble becomes a crag overgrown with moss.
This poem has more than the usual amount of extrinsic interest: a variant that first appeared in a 1013 anthology, with the first line kimi ga yo wa, "[my] lord's life" instead of "my lord," is now used as Japan's national anthem. The action that should last eight thousand years/ages is another omitted-but-understood verb, though in the anthem version "live" is more clearly implied -- which may be why it's better known. Eight is a particularly auspicious number, and is as well sometimes used as a generically large quantity. That rocks grow instead of erode comes from Chinese folklore and moss is a sign of age and stability.
344.  (Author unknown) (Topic unknown.)
watatsuumi no hama no masago o kazoetsutsu kimi ga chitose no arikazu ni semu	I keep tallying the grains of sand on the beach     by the wide ocean: may they total as many as my lord's millennia.
The word kimi (in used in many of this book's poems) could at the time be simply an honorific "you" but is more often understood as "my lord," and given this poem has been recited at imperial coronations, the latter specifically has the sanction of tradition here. The stock epithet wata-tsu-umi (see #250) is here applied to the beach with the effect of "of/by the broad ocean," while masago is a poeticism for sand.
345.  (Author unknown) (Topic unknown.)
shio no yama sashide no iso ni sumu chidori kimi ga miyo o-ba yachiyo to zo naku	The plovers that dwell on Sashide's rocky shore     below Salt Mountain are indeed calling the reign of my lord "eight thousand years."
Lost in translation: the onomatopoeia for a plover's call is usually chiyo, which can be heard as "thousand years," but honorific hyperbole has changed this to yachiyo, "eight thousand years." Some traditions locate Salt Mountain in Kai Province (modern Yamanashi Prefecture), and commentaries split on whether to read sashide as a place name of uncertain location or literally "a spit," indicating the shoreline juts out into the waters. The original is highly polished, with its frequent i and o sounds echoing, and finally resolving in, the plover's call and the shi-/sa-/su- sounds starting the first three lines.
346.  (Author unknown) (Topic unknown.)
waga yowai kimi ga yachiyo ni torisoete todomeokiteba omoiide ni seyo	I take my own age and add it to my lord's     eight thousand years, and if you retain them use that time as a memory.
It's ambiguous whether the "if" clause is the entire first four lines or just the fourth, but the latter results in a more humble statement. Omitted-but-understood: that the memory is of the speaker.
347.  Emperor Kôkô Composed [by the emperor] in the Ninna Era when celebrating the seventieth year of Archbishop Henjô.
kaku shitsutsu to ni mo kaku ni mo nagaraete kimi ga yachiyo ni au yoshi mogana	It happens that way -- by some way or another     time flows ever on. Oh, would that there be a means to meet in your eight-thousandth year!
The birthday party was held in the Twelfth Month of 885. (Not that it has any bearing on the the sentiment, but both died within five years.) Lost in translation: "happens" is in a frequentive conjugation.
348.  Henjô When the Ninna Emperor was [still] Crown Prince, he sent his aunt a silver cane for her eightieth birthday, and when [Henjô] saw it, he wrote this on the aunt's behalf.
chihayaburu kami ya kirikemu tsuku kara ni chitose no saka mo koenuberanari	It must have been the mighty gods who cut this:     for when I use it I shall cross over even the hill of a thousand years.
An excellent example of Henjô's light social wit, deployed in service of one of the better poems of this book. The identity of cane's recipient is unknown as no one in the historical records fits the circumstances, a problem compounded by speculation over whether she was an aunt or grandmother -- my base text actually says the former, but the latter's a near-homophone, chronologically more plausible, and a common emendation. Wordplay lost in translation: tsuku can mean both to "use" a cane and to "start" a journey.
349.  Ariwara no Narihira Written when there was a banquet at the Kujô Residence for the fortieth birthday of the Horikawa Chancellor.
sakurabana chirikaikumore oiraku no komu to iunaru michi magau ga ni	O cherry blossoms, scatter, mingle together     -- cloud in confusion the road along which they say Old Age will be approaching.
Fujiwara no Mototsune, brother of the Nijô Empress (see #4) and adopted son and heir of their uncle, Fujiwara no Yoshifusa (see #52), was called the Horikawa Chancellor after his main residence; the celebration took place in 875 at an alternate villa. In the year before the party, two major fires had broken out in the imperial compound, and some commentaries have speculated that the poem's imagery may have been inspired by their smoke, but if so, it seems a politically risky allusion given Mototsune was firmly in power through these misfortunes. Lost in translation: the confusion is marked as a counterfactual desire. Note the implied wind blowing the petals about, and the contrast of romantic, fleeting cherry petals with aging. The personification of old age here can be thought of as an early form of shinigami or death-god. All in all, this poem is as good, if in a different way, as the previous.
350.  Ki no Koreoka Written the day a celebration was held in Ôi for fortieth birthday of Prince Sadatoki's aunt.
kame-no-o no yama no iwane o tomete otsuru taki no shiratama chiyo no kazu kamo	The white-gem droplets of the cascade that tumbles     over the boulders of this Turtletail Mountain: the count of your thousands of years?
Nothing is known about Koreoka aside from that he has this single poem in the Kokinshu. ¶ Back to more pedestrian verse. Sadatoki (b. 870) was a son of Emperor Seiwa (by a daughter of Fujiwara no Mototsune, see previous) who had a villa on the bank of the Ôi River (see #312) near the foot of Mt. Kame-no-o ("turtle's tail"), now called Kameyama ("turtle mountain"), in western Kyoto. Neither the aunt nor the occasion's date has been identified, aside from that it probably took place after 890. Turtles are symbols of longevity throughout east Asia.
351.  Fujiwara no Okikaze Written on a depiction of someone flower-viewing amid scattering cherry blossoms on a folding screen for the celebration of the fiftieth birthday of the [Nijô] Empress held by Prince Sadayasu.
itazura ni suguru tsukihi wa omôede hana mite kurasu haru zo sukunaki	The months and days that pass by in idleness     aren't noticed, yet the days of spring spent watching the flowers seem few indeed.
Sadayasu was another (see previous) son of Emperor Seiwa born in 870, this one by his consort, Nijô (see #4), who turned fifty in 891. Omitted-but-understood words: "days of" and "seem," both strongly implied by the construction. It's more literally "idly"/"uselessly" than "in idleness," but the latter's overtones fit better to my ear. The flattery here is the implicit comparison of Nijô's beauty to that of spring flowers.
352.  Ki no Tsurayuki Written on the folding-screen [placed] behind Prince Motoyasu at his seventieth birthday celebration.
haru kureba yado ni mazu saku umi (no) hana kimi ga chitose no kazashi to zo miru	When spring arrives, the plum flowers that blossom     first in my garden do indeed seem adornments for the thousand years of my lord.
Motoyasu, a son of Emperor Ninmyô, turned 70 around 901 (there are scholarly disagreements over how to interpret the records). Note the point-of-view is within the painting but also stepping outside it, pulling the flowers inside it out into the real world -- a very interesting frame-slippage. Lost in translation: the adornments are those for hair or a hat.
353.  Sosei (for the same celebration)
inishie ni ariki arazu-ba shiranedomo chitose no tameshi kimi ni hajimemu	Although I don't know whether or not it existed     in an ancient time, the custom of a thousand years shall begin with my lord.
Omitted word: "living" for those thousand years, which I left understood. Technically, the "whether or not" has mixed tenses, with the positive part conjugated in a past tense and the negative in the present, giving the poem an interesting past/present/future construction; a literally rendering sounds very odd in English, however, and in any case the idiom was understood as entirely past.
354.  (Sosei) (for the same celebration)
fushite omoi okite kazouru yorozuyo wa kami zo shiruramu waga kimi no tame	The ten-thousand years I lie down and ponder,     I get up and count -- the gods indeed surely know: they're destined for my lord.
Sosei ups the stakes from a mere eight-thousand years: ten-thousand years was generally understood as not even indefinitely long but closer to near-infinite. The first half of the poem is built around a neat structural antithesis, and the "my" part of "my lord" is, for once, explicit. Omitted-but-understood verb: "are."
355.  Ariwara no Shigeharu Written for Fujiwara no Miyoshi's sixtieth birthday celebration.
tsuru kame mo chitose no nochi wa shiranaku ni akanu kokoro ni makasehatetemu kono uta wa, aru hito, ariwara no tokiharu ga to mo iu	Though we don't know what comes after the thousand years     of cranes and turtles, I would that you entrust yours to an unsatisfied heart. Some people also say this poem is by Ariwara no Tokiharu.
Shigeharu (dates unknown) was the second son of Ariwara no Narihira (see #53) and younger brother of Muneyana (see #15). He has 6 poems in the Kokinshu. ¶ Miyoshi is otherwise unknown, as is the Tokiharu of the footnote. Both cranes and turtles were thought to live a thousand years, and so symbolize of longevity. Whose heart is unsatisfied by Miyoshi's lifespan is unclear: while the author's is the easiest to read ("my heart that's not tired of you"), the recipient's and the gods' are other possibilities -- and all three have difficulties interpreting just what's up with the entrusting.
356.  Sosei Written for Yoshimine no Tsunenari's fortieth birthday celebration on behalf of his daughter.
yorozuyo o matsu ni zo kimi o iwaitsuru chitose no kage ni sumamu to omoeba	This long-waiting pine has celebrated my lord     -- for I too would live under the shelter of it, of a crane's thousand years.
The date of the celebration is unknown but Tsunenari, a middling courtier, died in 875; Sosei was presumably involved as a family member (his lay name was Yoshimine no Harutoshi). The pine seems to have been either a gift or part of the decorations. A couple possible pivot-words here, one of them particularly interesting because matsu is written with the kanji for "pine tree" but a direct object marker forces also understanding it as the verb "wait" -- clear evidence that pivot-words are not always written phonetically. More debatably, tsuru could be both a perfective conjugation for celebrate and "crane" or simply understood as an associated word giving overtones, and kage could be both the pine tree's "shade" and the millennium's "protection" or simply understood more generally as "shelter". All in all, though, there's rather more word-play than usual for Sosei -- and more possible ways to read it. Technically, the waiting is for "ten-thousand ages," but I couldn't make it fit and, again, a near-infinite time is understood. Who would live in the shelter is unstated -- given the headnote, the traditional reading is the putative speaker, but it could also be the recipient.
357.  (Sosei) A poem written on a folding screen with pictures of the four seasons when the Principal Handmaiden celebrated the fortieth birthday of Major Captain of the Right Fujiwara [no Sadakuni].
kasugano ni wakana tsumitsutsu yorozuyo o iwau kokoro wa kami zo shiruramu	While I pick young greens on Kasuga Plain, my heart     is celebrating your ten-thousand ages -- the gods themselves must know this!
Poems 357–363 are all for the same screen -- this and the next implicitly for the spring panel(s). The Principal Handmaiden was Fujiwara no Michiko, a younger sister of Sadakuni (866–906), who celebrated his 40th birthday in 905 -- other siblings include Yoruka (see #80) and Sadakata (see #231). Sadakuni was, incidentally, also involved in the 903 ouster of Sugewara no Michizane (see #272), and his death the year after this celebration was another attributed to Michizane's vengeful spirit. Much of which is irrelevant to the poem, but I still find this stuff interesting -- and it is relevant that Michiko wasn't promoted to Principal Handmaiden until 907, as this adds to the confusion surrounding the date of the Kokinshu. For Kasuga Plain and picking young greens, see #17–18. Given the Fujiwara clan shrine was in Kasuga, near Nara, it may have been the clan's singular god who's supposed to know.
358.  [Ôshikôchi no Mitsune] (for the same screen)
yama takami kumoi ni miyuru sakurabana kokoro no yukite oranu hi zo naki	So tall the mountains, those cherry blossoms appear     among the high clouds -- there's been not a single day my heart doesn't go pluck one.
Poems #358–363 are not explicitly attributed, and while normally this would imply they're all Sosei's, we know the actual authors from other sources. In this case, Mitsune's collected poems claims credit, and the focus on the speaker's response is certainly characteristic of him. The topic is typical for spring -- compare the structurally similar #50 and #87, which both have the same first and third lines as this one, though this is obscured in translation. Also obscured in translation: the poem is a single long statement, which I broke up to more closely preserve the order of images. To dwell "among the clouds" can idiomatically mean to be of high rank, thus making the poem codedly appropriate for the occasion. The phrase also suggests being out of one's social reach, and given Mitsune had a low enough rank he likely couldn't have attended the celebration for an important Fujiwara minister, the desire to pluck the blossoms can be read as allegorical for Mitsune's desire to be there, thus reaching the ideal of this sort of screen poem by also elliptically referring to the occasion. That the cherry blossoms can, per the usual grammatical ambiguity, be read as addressee may play into this.
359.  [Ki no Tomonori] (for the same screen): Summer.
mezurashiki koe naranaku ni hototogisu kokora no toshi o akazu mo aru kana	Even though its voice is in no way uncommon,     ah, we never do through all the years get tired of hearing the cuckoo.
Attribution comes from Tomonori's collected poems -- and the combination of highly polished sound and entirely conventional sense is certainly typical for him. (Note, btw, that the celebration gives us the last known date Tomonori was alive: the Second Month of 905.) The congratulatory aspect is the many years, with the untiring bird a symbol for Sadakuni. The usual lack of a case marker for the cuckoo makes it possible to read either that it doesn't get tired (of singing) or that the speaker doesn't get tired of it, but the convention of using the POV of someone in the painting suggests understanding the latter and so supplying the implied verb "hearing."
360.  [Ôshikôchi no Mitsune] (for the same screen): Autumn.
suminoe no matsu o akikaze fuku kara ni koe uchisouru oki tsu shiranami	When the autumn winds are blowing through the pine trees     of Suminoe, their voices are added to the white waves of the open sea.
Attribution is from Mitsune's collected poems and the Shuishu, as this is one of the rare poems to be picked more than once for an imperial anthology -- a sign of how much the poem was valued as a model for the genre. Suminoe is an inlet in modern Osaka near the Sumiyoshi Shrine, which is dedicated to a god of good fortune such as wished upon the guest of honor, and the voices of wind and waves evokes the voices of the banquet guests. Of note: the set phrase oki tsu shiranami, "white waves of the open sea," uses what was an old-fashioned (possibly already archaic?) genitive particle tsu. Omitted-but-understood verb: the "are" of "are added."
361.  [Mibu no Tadamine] (for the same screen)
chidori naku saho no kawagiri tachinurashi yama no ko no ha mo iro masariyuku	Mist must have risen from the river at Saho     where the plovers cry: the leaves on even mountain trees turn surpassingly vivid.
Attribution is from Tadamine's collected poems, plus a variant text (with the last line "change colors") also collected in the Shuishu. For Saho, see #265; the river that flows by the hill is noted for its plovers, though it's not clear whether the association predates this poem. For why "even," see #256. The poem is appropriate for the occasion because the chi of chidori, "plover," is written with the kanji meaning "one thousand," as in the number of years wished for. Note this has nearly the same last line as #24 & 25.
362.  [Sakanoue no Korenori] (for the same screen)
aki kuredo iro mo kawaranu tokiwayama yoso no momiji o kaze zo kashikeru	Though autumn has come, not even the colors change     on Evergreen Hill, and it's the winds that lend it these bright leaves from someplace else.
Attribution is from Korenori's collected poems. Evergreen Hill is, as in #251, Tokiwa west of Kyoto, which often appears in birthday poems because of its name. Were it not for its informal register, "the colors don't even change" would be a better translation.
363.  [Ki no Tsurayuki] (for the same screen): Winter.
shirayuki no furishiku toki wa miyoshino no yama shita kaze ni hana zo chirikeru	When the white snowflakes continually come down,     they are flowers scattering in the winds from beautiful Mt. Yoshino.
One last poem for the Sadakuni's screen. The attribution is from Tsurayuki's collected poems, which claims his contribution was an imperial commission. Compare #9, where Tsuryuki has the same "elegant confusion" of snowflakes for flower petals. How this applies to the occasion is bit elliptical, but the standard explanation is that the falling snow represents the white hair of age and the flowers apparent youth -- plus, I think, Yoshino's association with the imperial family adds a bit of power flattery. Lost in my translation: the winds are specifically beneath or down from the mountain.
364.  Fujiwara no Yoruka Written when visiting at the birth of the Crown Prince.
mine takaki kasuga no yama ni izuru hi wa kumoru toki naku terasuberanari	The sun that comes out from behind the lofty peak     of Mt. Kasuga shall never be clouded over -- it will certainly shine on.
After snow comes the sun -- and after Michiko's party, a poem by her sister. Yasuakira, a son of Emperor Daigo (and so Yoruka's great-nephew) and another Fujiwara daughter, was born in 903 and named Crown Prince the following year. The Fujiwara clan shrine was at the foot of Mt. Kasuga, making this more flattering to Yoruka's own family than to the imperium.

Next book: poems of farewells by friends and lovers, and while they're influenced by Chinese conventions, they aren't nearly as formal and were nativized into modes beyond their models. Expect it some time this summer.

(Index for this series)

---L.

Comments

[incandescens]

Thank you very much! I do enjoy reading these, both the translations and the commentaries. Very much appreciated.

[larryhammer]

Thanks for the kind words. It's a project that keeps me out of trouble.

---L.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I can see how those get deeply repetitive very fast. #348 and #349 came as a breath of fresh air after the first few.

[larryhammer]

I could suspect that they're placed there for exactly that reason, but they actually fit the general pattern in the Kokinshu of, within a topic, placing anonymous poems first, then going in rough chronological order, with ties broken by writer's rank (or the recipient, in this case).

But yeah, not my favorite.

---L.