"in the village / where white snow had once fallen / spring has, I see, now arrived"

[larryhammer]

The Shinkokin(waka)shu, "New collection of older and recent (Japanese poems)," was the eighth imperially commissioned anthology of poetry in Japanese, and is generally considered the best and most important one after the Kokinshu (together with the Man'yoshu, they are the three cornerstones of classical poetry). It was compiled around 1205 near the end of the Heian period, almost exactly 300 years after the Kokinshu it emulated, and it is interesting to compare how the fashions of style changed in that time.

The most obvious is a shift in emphasis from voice and wit to image and emotional resonance. There's a greater reliance on concrete nouns instead of verbs, and many poems end on a noun phrase without a main verb. It looks like there are fewer speculative conjugations and deductions from appearance and more direct presentation of the (supposed) scene, but my sample size is too small to confirm this, ah, speculation. The poems are, also, the work of the first intertextual generation, who systematically developed the technique of "allusive variation" by partial quotation of one or more earlier poems from the canon, using the sources to provide additional resonance.

Below are translations of a random baker's dozen of seasonal poems from the first six books. There's no method to my choices aside from (obviously) the opening handful and getting one from each season -- they just caught my eye. My notes are light on the biographicals and allusions, and don't even touch the elaborate system of association and progression that govern the arrangement of poems. This should do for non-scholarly comparison, though.

1. Fujiwara no Yoshitsune Written on the feeling of spring starting.
miyoshino wa yama mo kasumite shirayuki no furinishi sato ni haru wa kinikeri	In fair Yoshino the mountains too are hazy,     and in the village where white snow had once fallen spring has, I see, now arrived.
I'm guessing part of the appeal here is the white-and-white imagery (Fujiwara no Teika, one of the six editors of the SKKS, is notorious for being fond of this) but that Yoshitsune was regent at the time probably didn't hurt. In any case, this is very much a visually oriented poem that nontheless manages a timeslip much like Tsurayuki's KKS #2, if not as aurally acute. (It is, FWIW, playing off KKS #3, or at least its tradition.)
2. Emperor Go-Toba A poem on the beginning of spring.
honobono to haru koso sora ni kinikerashi ama no kaguyama kasumi tanibiku	Faintly, so faintly -- but spring, yes, appears to have     arrived in the sky. From heavenly Mt. Kagu, haze is trailing off the peak.
Mt. Kagu, often described by the stock epithet "heavenly," is in Nara Prefecture near the site of the Fujiwara capital, abandoned for Nara five centuries before -- as such, it's an evocation of the romantic past. "Off the peak" is translator interpolation to bring out the image of descending from heaven. The tentativeness of most of the first sentence contrasts oddly with how emphatically "spring" is marked.
3. Princess Shikishi When presenting a hundred-poem sequence, a spring poem.
yama fukami haru to mo shiranu matsu no to ni taedae kakaru yuki no tamamizu	On the pine-tree gate within the deep mountains where     I can't even tell it's spring, faintly trickling gems of water from the snow.
The "when presenting" phrasing seems to mean something like "this is from a hundred-poem sequence that was presented" to someone of high rank. Writing sequences of fifty or a hundred poems was a relatively new thing -- in Kokinshu days, poems might be in (literal) conversation, but weren't created as part of a sequenced collection. If this were a Kokinshu poem, I'd read matsu as "wait" as well as "pine," but pivot-words had fallen out of fashion by Shinkoknishu times and until I see an unabiguous use, I'll assume it isn't one. The pine gate suggests a hermitage. Note the lack of a main verb, though there are two in subordinate clauses. Note also the color imagery of white on green.
4. Kunaikyô When presenting a fifty-poem sequence.
kakikurashi nao furusato no yuki no uchi ni ato koso miene haru wa kinikeri	In the overcast, footprints in the fallen snow     of the old village more and more cannot be seen. Yet springtime has arrived.
The topic-marking wa seems to be contrastive -- a sense similar to "(despite all these signs of winter) as for spring, it has (indeed) come." Absent an analogous construction in English, I resorted to a more heavyhanded explicit conjunction. I'm unclear on whether kakikurashi is darkness from clouding over or nightfall, but the former is more of a seasonal thing, playing into the contrast. (Again, I ignore a possible pivot-word: yuki = "snow" / "going")
5. Fujiwara no Shunzei When presenting a hundred-poem sequence to the Chancellor, then serving as Minister of the Right, on the feeling of spring starting.
kyô to ieba morokoshi made mo yuku haru o miyako no nomi to omoikeru ka na	When we say, "Today!" still we believe this season     of spring that travels even to China is, ah!, only in this capital.
A more cosmopolitan poem than the previous -- and given the manner, easier to translate with my current practice. The Chancellor, BTW, is the Yoshitsune of #1.
6. Shun'e Topic unknown.
haru to ieba kasuminikeri na kinou made nami ma ni mieshi awajishimayama	Now that we say it's spring, look, the sky has hazed over!     The peak of Awaji that was, until yesterday, visible between the waves ...
Awaji is the largest island in the Seto Inland Sea. In the second half, another noun phrase without a main verb. The waves of winter are higher than those of spring, thus the space between them being important.
8. Author unknown Topic unknown.
kaze mazeni yuki wa furitsutsu shikasu ga ni kasumi tanabiki haru wa kinikeri	Snowflakes keep falling mixed together with the wind,     but nevertheless mists are trailing through the sky and springtime has arrived.
This is more Kokinshu in manner than the previous poems. "Through the sky" is translator interpretation. Same last line as #4, but here the contrast is explicit and emphatic.
100. Fujiwara no Toshinari From the poetry contest in 1500 rounds, a spring poem.
iku tose no haru ni kokoro o tsukushikinu aware to omoe miyoshino no hana	For how many years have you exhausted my heart     in the springtime? Have pity on me, flowers of beautiful Yoshino!
Skipping ahead to cherry blossom time -- the original says just "flowers," but this is an "allusive variation" (honka-dori) on a poem addressed to cherry blossoms, and even aside from the convention that plain hana is sakura, the audience would have caught that context. The contest, the largest one recorded, was sponsored by Go-Toba in 1201.
139. Fujiwara no Ietaka When presenting a fifty-poem sequence.
sakurabana yume ka utsutsu ka shirakumo no taete tsune naki mine no harukaze	Those cherry blossoms -- just a dream? or reality?     The clouds of white have vanished from the peaks, and an unstable spring wind ...
This is an allusive variation on not one but two Kokinshu poems (#601 and #942), and happens to make an interesting example of how this intertextuality can work: the shira that here is "white" is, in the original, the stem of shirazu, "do not know" -- which means Ietaka didn't need to answer his question because it was pulled into the text by his readers. I don't make this explicit in my translation because, well, I'm nowhere near as well-read as his audience -- I have to rely on commentaries to even know to there's an allusion -- and it's more-or-less implied by the rest of the poem. Note again no main verb (in either statement).
189. A poet of the reign of Emperor Daigo Topic unknown.
natsugusa wa shigerinikeredo hototogisu nado waga yado ni hitokoe mo senu	The summer grasses have come into full leaf,     so why, O cuckoo, do you make not even one single sound in my garden?
The first cuckoo poem of the summer book is a non-appearance -- topics, it seems, didn't change as much as styles. Of course, it still reads very much like a Kokinshu poem, having been written during the same reign as its compilation.
422. Fujiwara no Yoshitsune When presenting a fifty-poem sequence [on the topic] "Field, road, moon."
yukusue wa sora mo hitotsu no musashino ni kusa no hara yori izuru tsukikage	At the journey's end, the sky and a single field --     in Musashino from out of the plain of grass the rising moonlight ...
An autumn poem, and another without a main verb. The plain of Musashino is now an inner suburb of Tokyo.
469. Jakuren When presenting a hundred-poem sequence.
mono omou sode yori tsuyu ya naraiken akikaze fukeba taenu mono to wa	So did these dewdrops learn from this "patched sleeve"     that broods upon things? -- for when the autumn winds blow, they're both things that waste away.
More autumn. The original just has "sleeve," but a "patched sleeve" is a common idiom for a monk's habit and by extension the monk himself (which Jakuren was). It may also be that we're to understand there are tears on the sleeve, teaching the dew to vanish. FWIW, this and the next were the two hardest to translate of this set.
705. Jakuren Written at the house of the Tsuchimikado Grand Minister [Minamoto no Michichika], on the feeling of "the seashore at year's end."
oi no nami koekeru mi koso aware nare kotoshi mo ima wa sue no matsuyama	Waves of old age cross (like Pine Mountain in Sue)     over my body -- it's pitiful! This year, then -- now I'm waiting for the end.
For a winter sample, the penultimate one of the book. For this one, of the possible pivot-words, reading one as a pivot is essential to understanding a complex poem: sue is "end" and a place-name (see KKS #326). The other possibility, matsu = "pine" / "wait", is grammatically strained and not essential (it requires pretending a subject is a direct object), but strengthens the emotional content. "Waves of old age" are an idiom for wrinkles, and they are crossing the poet the way waves are said should never cross the proverbial Pine Mountain of young lovers' vows.

---L.

(Index for this project)

Comments

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I'm far too amused by your cut-tag for this post. :-)

[larryhammer]

"Too" amused? HOW?

---L.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Thank you, these are lovely.

[larryhammer]

De nada.

Or, more appropriately, それは何もない (sore wa nani mo nai).

---L.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

In #5, is morokoshi sorghum? I presume that's a standard reference to China?

[larryhammer]

An archaic name of China, yes, but it's written 唐土 -- "land of the Tang." Even long after the Tang dynasty was gone, they still called it that in Japan. (Weblio's entry, if it helps.) The sorghum meaning is a chance homonym.

---L.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Cool, thanks! I was wondering if it was some sort of allusion to fields of sorghum around the Yellow River. Which would have given a whole extra meaning to Red Sorghum.

[larryhammer]

Heh. No, no such extra meaning.

---L.