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larryhammerAfter parting and travel, the editors take things in a new direction with a book of wordplay poems. Since wordplay rarely carries over between languages, these are a challenge to translate -- in fact, I completely fail to reproduce their salient feature. I can only hope that at least I've made the poems interesting in themselves.
Aside from a couple acrostics, the game for most of these poems is called "hidden topic." The challenge here is to work the sound of a topic word (or phrase) into the poem's text without actually using the word itself. This is similar how pivot-words work, only without making the secondary meaning part of the poem, resulting in something of a word-find puzzle. Sometimes the poem is somehow related to the topic, and some even are riddles where the topic is the answer, but most of the time the topic is irrelevant. I've no idea what the ideal at the time was, but I personally like it when it is relevant.
The game fell out of fashion a few generations after the Kokinshu, and only one other imperial anthology includes any -- "facile wordplay instead of heartfelt emotion" was the judgment of later taste. (Modern readers often have a similar reaction to acrostic poems in English.) I like them, though, translation difficulties aside -- they show poets engaging with the possibilities of language in itself, even if the point was to be clever rather than write great poetry. Also, the first two groups of topics are sort of mini-recapitulations of the seasonal books, only this time with a lowered level of decorum and thus greater variety.
I mark the hidden topics in the romanized originals, though note that in modernized texts, after a millennium of pronunciation drift and spelling reforms, the poem-version sometimes doesn't exactly match the topic-version.
And with that, we're through half the books of the Kokinshu, if not quite yet half the poems. Next up: the first of five books of love poems -- a topic as important as the four seasons. Expect it in six months or so. (ETA: This wasn't completed.)
(Index for this series)
---L.
Aside from a couple acrostics, the game for most of these poems is called "hidden topic." The challenge here is to work the sound of a topic word (or phrase) into the poem's text without actually using the word itself. This is similar how pivot-words work, only without making the secondary meaning part of the poem, resulting in something of a word-find puzzle. Sometimes the poem is somehow related to the topic, and some even are riddles where the topic is the answer, but most of the time the topic is irrelevant. I've no idea what the ideal at the time was, but I personally like it when it is relevant.
The game fell out of fashion a few generations after the Kokinshu, and only one other imperial anthology includes any -- "facile wordplay instead of heartfelt emotion" was the judgment of later taste. (Modern readers often have a similar reaction to acrostic poems in English.) I like them, though, translation difficulties aside -- they show poets engaging with the possibilities of language in itself, even if the point was to be clever rather than write great poetry. Also, the first two groups of topics are sort of mini-recapitulations of the seasonal books, only this time with a lowered level of decorum and thus greater variety.
I mark the hidden topics in the romanized originals, though note that in modernized texts, after a millennium of pronunciation drift and spelling reforms, the poem-version sometimes doesn't exactly match the topic-version.
| 422. Fujiwara no Toshiyuki Bush warbler (uguisu) | |
| kokoro kara hana no shizuku ni sohochitsutsu uku hizu to nomi tori no nakuramu | Of his own free will he keeps soaking himself with drops from the flowers -- so why does this bird only cry, "Sadly my wings never dry"? |
| The first group of topics are flying animals, starting with our old friend from early spring. "My wings" is omitted-but-understood: as part of courting displays, bush warblers flutter their wings while perched in trees. Sorry 'bout the rhyme, but it just fell out without trying and for once it feels appropriate, given the tone. Replacing "sadly" with "oh noes" would be Too Much, though. | |
| 423. (Fujiwara no Toshiyuki) Lesser cuckoo (hototogisu) | |
| kubeki hodo toki suginure ya machiwabite nakunaru koe no hito o toyomuru | Is it because we're weary of waiting for the time when it should have come, that hearing this voice calling makes us cry out as well? |
| Another old friend, this one from summer. The answer to the implicit riddle is clear but what, exactly, is being asked is not, as it's ambiguous who is waiting for whom and who cries. It seems more likely to be people waiting for the topical bird (a traditional occupation, according to the start of book III), but that it's the bird waiting for its mate has been proposed as a grammatically less strained reading (though note that grammar is sometimes strained anyway by shoehorning the hidden topic in, at least in the hands of less deft poets). | |
| 423a (1101). [Author unknown] Cicada (higurashi) | |
| somabito wa miyaki hikurashi ashibiki no yama no yamabiko yobitoyomunari hototogisu shita, utsusemi ue | It seems woodcutters are hauling out the timber for building the shrine -- I hear their echoes resound from the foot-weary mountains. Below "lesser cuckoo," above "cicada shell." |
| This requires some textual history. All modern editions of the Kokinshu derive from a handful of manuscripts prepared by Fujiwara no Teika in the early 13th century, which he created by collating variants against a base text edited by his father. Over the years, Teika restored more and more poems, including some struck by his father, but rather than mess with the received sequence, he appended his additions onto the end with notes explaining where they should go. (One marker of textual traditions is the number added.) My base text is a lightly modernized transcript of a manuscript made by Teika in the late 1220s, the only complete edition in his hand that we have, with poems 1101-1111 being his restorations. According to his footnote, this should have come between #423 and #424 -- and so, in defiance of tradition, I'm translating it as #423a. (That this and the previous both end with forms of toyomu, "make noise," and this and the next are both cicada poems, thus creating actual transitions, is at least partial justification, but I'd been planning to do this well before I noticed that.) ¶ For the higurashi, an early-autumn cicada, see #204. Unlike the previous two poems, the content has no relationship with the topic -- though the sense of the stock epithet "foot-weary" is more relevant than usual. Unresolvable ambiguity: whether the timber is for a shrine or palace (both miya). | |
| 424. Ariwara no Shigeharu Cicada shell (utsusemi) | |
| nami no utsu se mireba tama zo midarekeru hirowaba sode ni hakanakaramu ya | Looking at the shoals struck by the waves, there are gems all scattered about. If I gather them up, though, won't they vanish in my sleeve? |
| A summer/early-autumn topic, one metaphorically rather than literally related to the content: the shell from the final juvenile molt of a cicada was a common Buddhist symbol for an existence that is empty and "fleeting," as the originally literally puts it (#443, for example, uses it as a stock epithet for the world). The gems are, of course, drops of spray, and sleeves are where one conventionally gathers up drops (of tears). | |
| 425. Mibu no Tadamine Reply. | |
| tamoto yori hanarete tama o tsutsumame ya kore namu sore to utsuse mimu kashi | Can we really wrap such gems as these together outside of a sleeve? If you say, "That's so," well hey, pass them here -- I'd like to see! |
| Same hidden topic, one-upped with an snarky response. I'm not sure I've quite caught the attention-getting sense of the final kashi. | |
| 426. Author unknown Plum (ume) | |
| ana u me ni tsune narubeku mo mienu ka na koishikerubeki ka wa nioitsutsu | What sadness! It seems that what to the eye appears must, alas, not last -- and yet it keeps giving off a scent that must be longed for. |
| The second and largest group of topics is various plants, again in rough seasonal order (though this breaks down near the end) starting with the early-spring plum. The topic is relevant to the content, but the repeated assertive conjugation -beku/-beki (rendered as "must") is clunky, as is displacing "to the eye" out of standard order to construct the topic word (a rough equivalent of inverting a sentence to reach a rhyme). "And yet" is interpretive, but some sort of concessive conjunction is called for. | |
| 427. Ki no Tsurayuki Mountain cherry (kaniwazakura) | |
| kazukedomo nami no naka ni wa sagurarede kaze fuku-goto ni ukishizumu tama | Even diving down, fumbling around in the waves I can't feel them out -- these gems that float up and sink every time the wind blows. |
| The longest hidden-word topic so far, requiring more ingenuity to work in. What the topic is, exactly, is even more of a challenge, as kaniwazakura is an archaic name now identified with a couple different trees, the most common being a type of ornamental mountain cherry (Prunus serrulata var. kabazakura) and the Japanese bird-cherry (Prunus grayana). The former seems a more suitably elegant topic, but you should probably read an implied "(?)" after it. The poem itself would, I think, do a little better immediately after #424-425 (but then, #431 also uses the same conceit). That we've met worse examples of Chinese-mannered faux naivete doesn't excuse this one. | |
| 428. (Ki no Tsurayuki) Japanese plum flowers (sumomo no hana) | |
| ima ikuka haru shi nakereba uguisu mo mono wa nagamete omouberanari | Now that there aren't many days left of springtime, it seems that even the bush warbler gazes off into space, brooding on things. |
| This is a different species of plum (Prunus salicina) from the ume blossoms (Prunus mume) of early spring imported from China -- this is the main fruit tree, with white flowers that aren't as ornamental and bloom later. The implication in the poem is that the bird has gone silent, giving a "reasoning" style poem without the evidence half, which is refreshing. The "things" brooded upon are given a slight emphasis (marked as the sentence topic rather than direct object), subtly implying the bird is melancholy over the departing blossoms of the topic. | |
| 429. Kiyowara no Fukayabu Apricot blossom (karamomo no hana) | |
| au kara mo mono wa nao koso kanashikere wakaremu koto o kanete omoeba | As soon as we meet, even then I am indeed still more sorrowful -- for already I'm aware of our parting to come. |
| Apricot is the probable topic, though karamomo, lit. "Chinese peach," can also refer to a, well, Chinese variety of peach -- either one, though, is a late-spring topic. One of the smoother poems of this book, with an irrelevant topic ingenuously incorporated. Compare #372, and many love poems to come. | |
| 430. Ono no Shigekage Mandarin orange (tachibana) | |
| ashibiki no yama tachihanare yuku kumo no yadori sadamenu yo ni koso arikere | Like a drifting cloud that has separated from foot-weary mountains, we live in this world, I see, without any fixed abode. |
| Shigekage's birthdate is unknown, but he had a career as a middling courtier from the 880s till his death in 896. This is his only poem in the Kokinshu. ¶ For the early-summer tachibana orange, see #121. In contrast to the cleverness of the previous couple poems, the topic is not hidden very deeply. Using an explicit comparison instead of letting the imagistic preface be an implicit metaphor is heavy-handed, and a stock-epithet gives the simple philosophical assertion a weighty tone. "Drifting" is interpretive, eked out from a three-verb pile-up describing the act of separating. | |
| 431. Ki no Tomonori Ogatama tree (ogatama no ki) | |
| miyoshino no yoshino no taki ni ukabi'izuru awa o ka tama no kiyu to mitsuramu | Did they see the foam that bubbles up in the falls of Yoshino, of beautiful Yoshino, as gems that vanish away? |
| Just like the three mysterious birds, there are three mysterious plants of the Kokinshu where it's uncertain what the archaic name refers to -- and the ogatama is one of them. From contemporary descriptions, we know it's an evergreen tree with long, broad leaves and white flowers in late spring, probably a type of magnolia. And speaking of archaisms, the repetition of mi-yoshino no yoshino no recalls that of #3, giving this an old-fashioned manner. Exactly who sees and when are both ambiguous as the auxiliary verb -tsu can indicate a perfective or continuing state, and while a present seeing is less grammatically strained, Yoshino's evocation as the site of a former imperial pleasure palace suggests it's a question about the past. That the latter makes the conceit less trite does not actually argue in its favor, given Tomonori's notable lack of originality. | |
| 431a (1102). Fujiwara no Kachion (Ogatama tree) | |
| kakerite mo nani o ka tama no kite mo mimu kara wa honoo to narinishi mono o ogatama no ki, tomonori shita | The spirit flies off -- yet even if it came back, what would it see? -- for the empty husk it left has been turned into flames. Below "ogatama tree" by Tomonori. |
| Another of Teika's restorations. This one is grammatically tangled, with three separate "even though" constructions -- which is at least one too many, and getting coherent English required a slight redistribution of conjunctions. "Empty husk" double-translates kara, while "it left" is interpretive. Funeral rites of the time involved cremation, and the relevance of the poem's content to the evergreen topic can be debated. | |
| 432. Author unknown Mountain persimmon tree (yamagaki no ki) | |
| aki wa kinu ima ya magaki no kirigirisu yo na yo na nakamu kaze no samusa ni | Autumn has arrived. Will it be now that crickets in our brushwood fence start crying night after night? -- with this chill in the wind. |
| While persimmons are typically thought of as an autumn topic for their fruit, they're also a mid-summer topic for their flowers. Even as a hidden-topic poem, this would not be out of place in book IV -- maybe not the best poem there, but as good as many. I especially like the rhythm given by the detached adverbial last line, despite the awkward in my English. | |
| 433. (Author unknown) Hollyhock, katsura (aoi, katsura) | |
| kaku bakari au hi no mare ni naru hito o ikaga tsurashi to omowazarubeki | Now that the days when we meet have become as infrequent as this, how can I not believe that this person is hard-hearted? |
| This has two topic words hidden separately. The katsura is the easier to explain, being here (in contrast to #194) the trees of genus Cercidiphyllum, sometimes called the Japanese redbud, cultivated for their drooping branches and vivid, scented autumn leaves. The aoi is more complicated: in modern Japanese it's the hollyhock, but in the Nara period it meant a type of wild ginger, now usually called futaba-aoi (Asarum caulescens), that gave its name to the Kyoto Aoi Festival, during which the Kamo Shrine was originally decorated with that aoi as well as katsura. The transition between the two names had already started in the Heian period, which means the topic could be either plant. Since commentaries disagree and the identity is not relevant to the poem, I turned aesthete and picked the prettier modern meaning. The sequencing here seems to be based on the May festival, as katsura is ordinarily an autumn topic for either the leaves or its winged seeds. In the poem itself, the speaker could be either a woman waiting for a visit or a man who keeps getting put off. Omitted-but-understood word: "infrequent." | |
| 434. (Author unknown) (Hollyhock, katsura) | |
| hitome yue nochi ni au hi no harukeku wa wa ga tsuraki ni ya omoinasaremu | If in the future because of other eyes the days we meet are seldom, would you then become convinced of my hard-heartedness? |
| Same two topics hidden in similar ways, giving the flip side. To keep it as gender-neutral as the previous, I read the implied pronoun as "you," but absent this context "he" or "she" is more likely. | |
| 435. Henjô Gentian (kutani) | |
| chirinureba nochi wa akuta ni naru hana o omoishirazu mo madou chô ka na | The butterfly that doesn't even realize and is, ah!, wrapped up in flowers that will become, once they have scattered, rubbish. |
| Exactly what a kutani is is unknown beyond that it's a summer flower that grows in the mountains, but the common speculation is that it's a gentian (modern rindô, also called bellflower). Henjô has a more subtle wordplay here than I'm used to from him: madou is to be enchanted (by the flowers), but matou, written identically at the time, is to entwine/wrap oneself around (what the not-understanding does) -- "is wrapped up in" carries much the same double-meaning. Even ignoring or overlooking this doubling, though, the archbishop has pleasantly packaged an orthodox Buddhist sentiment for our delight. | |
| 436. Ki no Tsurayuki Rose (saubi) | |
| ware wa kesa ui ni zo mitsuru hana no iro o ada naru mono to iubakarikeri | Only this morning I saw it for the first time. I must indeed call the color of this flower something that is coquettish. |
| An implicit riddle answered by the summer topic. Red roses were a novelty only recently imported from China. Interpretation issue: ada can mean either "transient" (with overtones of futile/vain) or "beautiful" (with overtones of bewitching). It's also possible to understand "a flower's color" as symbolic of "a woman's true nature," giving an interestingly large matrix of possible readings. While most commentaries settle on one or the other meaning of ada, it would not be beyond Tsurayuki to intend both at once (though it's a little premature for the idea of being beautiful because transient). "Coquettish" partakes something of both senses of ada, if not exactly, and also evokes (in a sexist way) the symbolic reading. | |
| 437. Ki no Tomonori Maidenflower (ominaeshi) | |
| shiratsuyu o tama ni nuku ya to sasagani no hana ni mo ha ni mo ito o mina heshi | It's as if to pierce the white dewdrops like pearls -- the spiders have stretched their warp threads over all of the flowers and the leaves. |
| Textual issue: my base text has ya to in l.2, which is a little confusing, and this is commonly (but not universally) emended to the more comprehensible to ya, changing a comparison-to-a-question into a question-about-a-comparison. Since the meaning is effectively the same either way, only that the emendation smooths text into Tomonori's usual graceful tempts me to make it. The topic is another old friend, this one from autumn. The stretching out of warp threads, as if on a loom, makes the dewdrops not the usual gems strung a necklace (compare #225) but ones woven onto cloth. This is an image I've not seen anywhere else, which means I should take back what I've said about Tomonori's complete unoriginality. | |
| 438. (Ki no Tomonori) (Maidenflower) | |
| asatsuyu o wakesohochitsutsu hana mimu to ima zo noyama o mina heshirinuru | Seeing these flowers while getting soaked by stepping through the morning dew, I've passed over and now know all of the fields and mountains. |
| A very active poem: five verbs, four of them compounded in unusual pairs and two implying other verbs. Note that the dew, like the riddle's hidden answer, is also an autumn topic. If you assume the maidenflowers stand for maidens (which the dew supports, given visiting lovers canonically depart at dawn), this becomes a boast about tom-catting it about. | |
| 439. Ki no Tsurayuki Written for the Maidenflower Contest in Suzaku Palace, with the five characters of "o-mi-na-e-shi" (maidenflower) placed at the start of every line. | |
| ogurayama mine tachinarashi naku shika no henikemu aki o shiru hito zo naki | The belling stag whose steps wear down Mount Ogura -- there's no one who knows how many weary autumns he has expierenced. |
| Not a hidden-topic poem but an acrostic. For the contest, see #230ff; for Ogura, see #312. I read aki as a pivot-word meaning "autumn" / "tired of," but this is not commonly accepted. It's also possible to take narasu as a pivot for "wear down" / "get used to" (similar to #410), but I don't see this as adding anything. | |
| 440. Ki no Tomonori Bellflower blossom (kichikô no hana) | |
| aki chikou no wa narinikeri shiratsuyu no okeru kusaba mo iro kawariyuku | Autumn has closed in on the fields: the colors of even the grass blades where the white dew has settled are fading and departing. |
| Specifically the Chinese bellflower (Platycodon grandiflorum, modern name kikyô), one of the canonical seven flowers of autumn skipped over in the seasonal books, which blooms for a long time before finally withering -- "even" here implies that the flowers are already blown. Once again Tomonori ingenuously works in an extended hidden topic, using a "reasoning style" poem that neatly balances approach and departure in a non-mechanical way (more literally, autumn "has become close"). I'd be happier if, where the topic is worked in, the sentence structure was a little more natural. | |
| 441. Author unknown Aster (shioni) | |
| furihaete iza furusato no hana mimu to koshi o nioi zo utsuroinikeru | Although I came, yes, expressly to see the flowers in my old hometown, their glorious blossoms have, it seems, just withered away. |
| Specifically, Tartarian aster (Aster tataricus, modern name shion), a perennial shrub with light purple flowers through most of autumn and into winter. "Blossoms" is interpretive, but the more literal "their being glorious" sounds a bit odd in English. | |
| 442. Ki no Tomonori Bellflower blossoms (riutan no hana) | |
| waga yado no hana fumishidaku tori utamu no wa nakereba ya koko ni shimo kuru | I shall chase away these birds trampling underfoot my garden flowers. Is it because there are none in the fields that they come here? |
| This is the native bellflower/gentian (Gentiana scabra, modern rindô), so possibly the same flower as #435 -- and possibly the flowers referred to in the poem. The poem itself is good evidence that the standards of decorum were different for wordplay poems than the rest of the Kokinshu. One commentary notes that the "beating" off (the more literal meaning) is possibly best imagined as throwing rocks -- cranky old guys, they are eternal. | |
| 443. Author unknown Miscanthus plumes (obana) | |
| ari to mite tanomu zo kataki utsusemi no yo o-ba nashi to ya omoinashitemu | We see that it is, yet it's hard to rely on. Should I be convinced that this cicada-shell world really doesn't exist? |
| Obana is the plume or ear of the miscanthus (see #242), an all-autumn topic. I'm pleased to see someone actively wrestling with standard Buddhist doctrine. (Interestingly, searches found this one quoted on a Zen temple's website.) "Yet" is interpretive, but some sort of contrast seems needed. | |
| 444. Yatabe no Nazane Morning glory seeds (kengoshi) | |
| uchitsuke ni koshi to ya hana no iro o mimu oku shiratsuyu no somuru bakari o | All of a sudden, I seem to see the flower's color as deeper -- even though they're just tinted by the settling white dew. |
| Nazane appears in court records as a minor official between 884 and his death in 900, and has this one poem in the Kokinshu. ¶ Kengoshi are the seeds of morning glories (Ipomoea purpurea), a topic for after the early-autumn blossoms. The point of the dew seems to be another apparent paradox about white dew and dark colors. Some commentaries suggest reading koshi as a pivot-word meaning "next year" in addition to "deep," and that this may be a Tanabata poem with the Weaver Maiden as speaker and the dew a euphemism for her tears. If this was intended, it's a murky reading I have to squint to make out. | |
| 445. Fun'ya no Yasuhide When the Nijô Empress was known as the Mother of the Crown Prince, she commanded [Yasuhide] to write a poem on a carved-wood "medo" flower. | |
| hana no ki ni arazaramedomo sakinikeri furinishi ko no mi naru toki mogana | Even though it's not a flowering tree, it has indeed blossomed. Would that a time may come when this aged stock bears fruit! |
| Medo is the second of the three mysterious plants of the Kokinshu: traditional esoteric interpretations include that it's a type of bush-clover (medohagi) carved out of wood as part of a floral display and that it's the location of the carving, either in a covered bridleway or a type of paneled door -- with the first of these being the most popular. Regardless, in addition to the hidden topic, Yasuhide worked in a pivoty double-meaning where ko no mi is "fruit of the tree" / kono mi is "this body" -- turning the second half of the poem into a sly request for her patronage (much like #8). I like the effect of arazaramedomo, "although should not be," showing up in the middle instead of at the end like most verbal pile-ups. | |
| 446. Ki no Toshisada Hare's-foot fern (shinobugusa) | |
| yama takami tsune ni arashi no fuku sato wa nioi mo aezu hana zo chirikeru | With mountains this high so that tempests constantly blow in the village, they can't even be splendid: the flowers, yes, have scattered. |
| This is the same plant as in #200. Given ferns don't flower, it's not a relevant topic in itself, though the double-meaning of "grasses of rememberance" is a relevant overtone. The tightening in of imagery from large to small and the 4/1 rhythm of the lines are neatly handled, giving the otherwise standard content a bit of freshness. This wouldn't be out of place in book II. | |
| 446a (1103). Ki no Tsurayuki Fennel (kure-no-omo) | |
| koshi toki to koitsutsu oreba yûgure no omokage ni nomi miewataru ka na shinobugusa, toshisada shita | "He came at this time," I think while longing for him, and so I keep seeing only his phantom, alas!, in the gathering twilight. Below "hare's-foot fern" [by] Toshisada. |
| Another Teika restoration. Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare, now more commonly called uikyô) is a mid-summer topic for its flowers and a mid-autumn one for the seeds -- presumably the latter is understood here, but see the next poem. The context implies a female speaker, thus my male pronouns. "Think" is interpretive -- the phrase might be spoken, but that seems less likely. | |
| 447. Taira no Atsuyuki An unknown lily (yamashi) | |
| hototogisu mine no kumo ni ya majirinishi ari to wa kikedo miru yoshi mo naki | O cuckoo, did you mingle with the clouds of the mountain peaks? Though I hear you are present, I cannot even glimpse you. |
| Atsuyuki was a great-grandson of Emperor Kôkô who had a career as a middling courtier between 893 and his death in 910. This is his only poem in the Kokinshu ¶ We know that the yamashi is a small purple lily also sometimes called hanasuge ("flower-sedge"), but not what it's called now. The level of not-knowing, however, apparently is not as high as for the three mysterious plants. Its seasonality is uncertain but the poem itself is summer -- and indeed, around here, the chronological progression starts getting muddled. | |
| 448. Author unknown Chinese bush-clover (karahagi) | |
| utsusemi no kara wa ki-goto ni todomuredo tama no yukue o minu zo kanashiki | Though each empty husk like cicada shells on trees rests in its coffin, how sorrowful it is that we can't see where the soul goes. |
| While the meaning of topic is clear, it's uncertain which variety of bush-clover was considered Chinese at the time. Regardless, it's an early autumn topic. Pivot-word: ki is a "tree" and a "coffin," a double-meaning extended to the "husk" that's both the literal cicada shell and the empty bodies of the dead. The standard sentiment of second half does not live up to how well the first half works in the original -- the effect isn't the same as leaving the bald last line unpolished in translation, but the let-down is similar. | |
| 449. Kiyowara no Fukayabu River-weed (kawanagusa) | |
| ubatama no yume ni nani ka wa nagusamamu utsutsu ni dani mo akanu kokoro wa | How on earth might this bring me comfort in these dreams black as lily seeds? -- I with a heart not even satisfied by the real world! |
| Kawanagusa (literally "river-grass") is the third of the three mysterious plants of the Kokinshu -- evidently some sort of riverine water-plant. The seasonality is also mysterious. Ubatama no, "of/as leopard-lily seeds," is a stock epithet for the night and things associated with it such as, here, "dreams," conveying a general, highly poetic sense of "pitch-black." Unstated-but-understood: the dreams are of seeing his lover. | |
| 450. Tokamuko no Toshiharu Hanging moss (sagarigoke) | |
| hana no iro wa tada hito sakari kokeredemo kaesugaesu zo tsuyu wa somekeru | The flowers' color heightens to what is only a single peak bloom, yet the dew is dyeing them over and over again. |
| Toshiharu's dates and parentage are unknown, but he had a career as a middling courtier from the 890s through 920s. This is his only poem in the Kokinshu. ¶ The moss, today called saruogase, is a hanging tree-lichen of genus Usnea, probably specifically Usnea longissima. It doesn't seem to have a seasonality, but the poem itself is apparently autumnal (see #209). The Japanese words for the "deep" of a color and "peak" of a bloom don't have literal senses as opposed as they are in English, but they don't exactly work together either (the semantic domains are "thick" and "being in front"). To avoid sounding completely paradoxical, I slightly mistranslate the former as "heighten," even though this makes them more parallel than they really are. | |
| 451. Ariwara no Shigeharu Timber bamboo (nigatake) | |
| inochi tote tsuyu o tanomu ni katakereba monowabishira ni naku nobe no mushi | It's so difficult, relying on the dewdrops for their very lives -- thus these insects of the fields that cry out so mournfully. |
| Nigatake is a type of large bamboo, either timber bamboo (Phyllostachys bambsoides, now called madake) or Simon bamboo (Pleioblastus simonii, now called midake), so called from the bitter taste (nigami) of its shoots. Since both species are used for timber, consider the translation a generic name. Regardless, it's a summer topic for an autumn poem. Crickets and the like were commonly believed to sip dew for their water. Dew is transient enough that it is used figuratively in Japanese to mean transience, so it would be understood that the problem is that it does not last long. | |
| 452. Prince Kagenori River bamboo (kawatake) | |
| sayo fukete nakaba takeyuku hisakata no tsuki fukikaese aki no yamakaze | As the night deepens, it rises to the zenith. Blow back and return to us the eternal moon, O mountain winds of autumn! |
| The birthdate of Kagenori is unknown, but given his father, Prince Kore'eda (a younger brother of Koretaka (see #74)), lived 846–868, it must have been in the 860s. He last appears in court records in 897 as a middling courtier and has two poems in the Kokinshu. ¶ The kawatake could generically mean bamboo growing on a riverbank or refer specifically to either the timber bamboo or Simon bamboo of the previous, so called because they were planted by the water in the imperial gardens. Like the previous poem, it's a summer topic for an autumn poem. I like the irony of using a stock epithet that probably means "everlasting" for a moon whose change is being complained about. | |
| 453. Shinsei Bracken (warabi) | |
| keburi tachi moyu to mo mienu kusa no ha o tare ka warabi to nazukesomekemu | These fronds of grasses where, even when they break out, smoke cannot be seen rising up -- who was it to first give them the name "straw-fire"? |
| Shinsei was a Buddhist priest, parentage and birthdates unknown, who was (per the headnote of #556) active during the time of Ono no Komachi (see #113) and Abe no Kiyoyuki (see #456) in the mid-9th century. He has two poems in the Kokinshu. ¶ Bracken can be associated with any season, but is most commonly a spring topic for its edible fiddleheads. Its name, warabi, sounds like wara, "straw," + bi, "fire," and moyu can mean both "sprout" and "burn." I read the latter as a pivot-word (with both senses here rendered as "break out") though the statement makes only marginally more sense for doing so. Frankly, I don't see how this counts as "hiding" the topic word. Compare #249, which also plays with etymology but does it using kanji and less naivete. | |
| 454. Ki Wet-Nurse Bamboo grass, pine, loquat, banana leaf (sasa, matsu, biwa, bashôba) | |
| isasame ni toki matsu ma ni zo hi wa henuru kokorobase o-ba hito ni mietsutsu | While I, negligently, waited for his time to come, the day has ended -- even though that person knows the true state of my feelings. |
| The parentage, personal name, and dates of this daughter of the Ki family are unknown, but she was wet-nurse to Emperor Yôzei (b. 869) so she was born probably around 850, and she received promotions in rank in 877 and 882 at the start and end of his reign, after which she disappears from the records. She has two poems in the Kokinshu. ¶ Textual issue: my base text has the non-word isazame in the first line, which is universally emended to isasame ("careless"/"without attention"). The plants arc wraps up with a couple show-off poems using multiple hidden topics, listed in the order used. Seasonality is all over the place with these and probably not worth detailing anyway, though some commentaries note these four may be linked by all having been used medicinally. "Of my feelings" is interpretive, as are "for his" and "to come." | |
| 455. [Fujiwara no] Hyôe Pear, jujube, walnut (nashi, natsume, kurumi) | |
| ajikinashi nageki na tsume so uki koto ni aikuru mi o-ba sutenu mono kara | This is tiresome. Cease all your lamentations. It's not as if what's been sacrificed is your lives to come in this wretched affair. |
| Hyôe's dates and personal name are unknown, but she was a sister of Fujiwara no Koreoka (see #390n) and is said to have married Fujiwara no Tadafusa (see #196). Like both of them, she was probably active in the 890s -- her use-name seems to come from the Palace Guards (hyôe), to which her father (Fujiwara no Takatsune, mourned by Tsurayuki in #849) was appointed Intendent or head of one division in 890, so she probably came of age around that time. She has two poems in the Kokinshu. ¶ One last multi-plant showing-off, this time with bracing asperity. The traditional understanding is that the "wretched matter" is an illness, but I'm not entirely convinced because the coming is done mutually, suggesting plural lives. | |
| 456. Abe no Kiyoyuki Written on the day spring started in a place called Karakoto ("Chinese zither"). | |
| nami no oto no kesa kara koto ni kikoyuru wa haru no shirabe ya aratamaruramu | As of this morning, the sounds of waves that can be picked out and heard -- might it be the melody of springtime has been renewed? |
| Born in 825, Kiyoyuki was a Chinese scholar and middling courtier who seems to have spent most of his time until 871 in the capital, after which he served in various provincial posts and governancies until his death in 900. He has two poems in the Kokinshu, the other which (#556) is a flirtation sent to Ono no Komachi. (His daughter also has a poem, #1055.) ¶ The third group of topics are all place names, organized by a general but not consistent progression of far from the capital to inside it. Karakoto, which is the hidden topic, is in modern Okayana Prefecture on the shore of the Inland Sea -- the poem's musical metaphor plays off its literal meaning, "Chinese koto" or zither. Lost in translation: "spring" was the name of a note in the traditional music scale. "Picked out" (translating koto ni, "especially") attempts to re-introduce some of this wordplay. | |
| 456a (1104). Ono no Komachi Okinoi, Miyakojima | |
| oki no ite mi o yaku yori mo kanashiki wa miyako shimabe no wakare narikeri karakoto, kiyoyuki shita | Even more painful than burning one's own body with flaring coals is the separation between the capital and those islands. Below "Karakoto" [by] Kiyoyuki. |
| Another Teika restoration. Okinoi and Miyakojima are the names of otherwise unknown islands. Whether the speaker or listener is departing is ambiguous, but it's easiest to read this as a speaker in the capital saying farewell to someone leaving for the islands -- thus my "those." However, the poem also appears anonymously in Tales of Ise as by a speaker on a Miyakojima somewhere in northern Honshu talking to someone leaving for the capital. One of the better hidden-topic poems, not only glancing at implications of the topic words but also working as poetry even when you don't know it's a puzzle-poem. | |
| 457. Prince Kanemi Cape Ikaga (Ikagasaki) | |
| kaji ni ataru nami no shizuku o haru nareba ikaga sakichiru hana to mizaramu | Why, given it's spring, do we not see the droplets splashing from the waves struck by our oars as flowers blooming and then scattering? |
| The location of Cake Ikaga is uncertain, but it one speculation is that it's the one in modern Hirakata City near Osaka. The original word order is a little funky, with "since it's spring" parenthetically inserted as the middle line -- possibly I should have found a poetic inversion to mimic this. "Splashing" is interpolation for clarity. | |
| 458. Abo no Tsunemi Cape Kara (Karasaki) | |
| kano kata ni itsu kara saki ni watarikemu namiji wa ato mo nokorazarikeri | How long ago did you cross ahead of me to over yonder? On the path of the waves, not even a wake remains. |
| Tsunemi appears in court records as a scholar and middling courtier between 893 and his death in 912. This is his only poem in the Kokinshu. ¶ Cape Kara is on the southwest shore of Lake Biwa in modern Ôtsu City. To my Western ear this sounds like an elegy, but Japanese commentaries don't mention the possibility but rather focus on the romantic scenery and the interesting coinage namiji, "wave-road." | |
| 459. Ise (Cape Kara) | |
| nami no hana oki kara sakite chirikumeri mizu no haru to wa kaze ya naruramu | The flowers of waves from the sea look like they are blooming, scattering. Isn't it as though the wind is springtime for the water? |
| Same topic, hidden marginally better; given the waves are arriving from the deepwater "offing" and Biwa as a lake generally doesn't go for whitecaps, the topic isn't as relevant as it might first seem. (Note, by the way, the assumption that an omitted topic can be carried over from the previous poem is here demonstrably correct, given it is hidden in the poem.) Seeing whitecaps as flowers is a conventional image (see #250, #272, et cet.) but lampshading the comparison gives a more charming effect than usual. Grammatical ambiguity: the wind might "be like" or "become" spring, and commentaries are split on which to understand, with a preference for the latter. The former is, to my mind, a more poetic conception, so I went with that. | |
| 460. Ki no Tsurayuki Kamiya River (Kamiyagawa) | |
| ubatama no wa ga kurokami ya kawaruramu kagami no kage ni fureru shirayuki | Is my hair as black as leopard-lily seeds changing its color? This white snow falling upon the reflection in the mirror ... |
| The Kamiya ("papermaker") is a stream that flows through the imperial palace grounds into the Kamo River. Decorative language: "of/as leopard-lily seeds" is here a stock epithet for black things, plus there's an overtone from a double-meaning of furu meaning "to age" as well as "to fall." The second half is a grammatical fragment, essentially acting as a declarative noun, the effect of which is probably more emphatic than I've rendered it. Compare #8. | |
| 461. (Ki no Tsurayuki) Yodo River (Yodogawa) | |
| ashibiki no yamabe ni oreba shirakumo no ika ni seyo to ka haruru toki naki | When I live beneath the foot-wearying mountains, what can the white clouds be telling me to do when there's never a time they clear? |
| The Yodo is the name of the lower stretches of the Uji River, which the Kamo mentioned in the previous flows into. The mountains suggest a religous retreat and the overcast a heavy heart, but I am not at all certain I correctly understand the second half (particularly line 4, split over ll.3-4 in translation). | |
| 462. Mibu no Tadamine Katano | |
| natsugusa no ue wa shigereru numamizu no yuku kata no naki waga kokoro ka na | Like some marshwater when the summer grasses grow thickly upon it, so it has nowhere to go -- alas, this heart of mine! |
| Katano, on the Yodo floodplain northeast of modern Osaka, was the location of a hunting lodge of Emperor Kammu. Yuku, "go," is used much like a pivot-word, only both times with the same meaning: for the (non-)motion of the marshwater of the first three lines, and as part of the fourth-line phrase "there is nowhere to go." As with many almost-pivots, the effect is an implied comparison, which I make explicit. Like #460, no main verb in the final clause, but the exclamation mark is explicit. | |
| 463. Minamoto no Hodokosu Katsura Palace (Katsura-no-miya) | |
| aki kureba tsuki no katsura no mi ya wa naru hikari o hana to chirasu bakari o | With autumn coming, might the cassia on the moon be growing seeds? -- ah, no, it's still scattering the light like flower petals. |
| Hodokosu was a great-grandson of Emperor Saga who appears in court records as middling courtier between 904 and his death in 931. This is his only poem in the Kokinshu. ¶ For the problems of the katsura, see #194 -- since this is the lunar tree, here "cassia," even though unlike the Japanese redbud (see #433) the cinnamon tree isn't noted for its seeds. The topical palace was a residence of a daughter of Emperor Uda. Textual issue: in the first line, my base text has aki kureba, "because autumn comes" but some textual traditions have aki kuredo, "although autumn comes" -- which reduces somewhat the irony of the rhetorical question expecting a negative answer. The point being, of course, that the plants of the eternal moon don't (or shouldn't) change. "No" and "petals" are interpretive, and for clarity in English I slightly mistranslate the final o as exclamatory instead of what is probably a conjunction meaning "even though." | |
| 463a (1105). Ayamochi Somedono, Awata | |
| ukime o-ba yoso me to nomi zo nogareyuku kumo no awatatsu yama no fumoto ni kono uta, mizuno'o no mikado no somedono yori awata e utsuritamaukeru toki ni yomeru, katsura [no] miya shita | I leave to escape this misery and, especially, the eyes of others -- there at the foot of mountains where the clouds rise up thickly. This poem was written when the Mizuno'o Emperor [Seiwa] moved from Somodono to Awata; below "Katsura Palace." |
| I've got nothing on this Ayamochi. No other Kokinshu poem is credited to him (or her?) and some textual traditions give the poem as author unknown (one manuscript, which puts this above #463, credits it to "Yamamochi"). ¶ Another Teika restoration. Somodono and Awata were estates in the capital, the former owned by Seiwa's grandfather and regent, Fujiwara no Yoshifusa (see #52), the latter by Yoshifusa's heir and successor, Fujiwara no Mototsune (see #349). The exact meaning of awatatsu is uncertain but the standard explanation is a sense something like "to rise thickly." The effect of first "misery" being emphatically marked and then "other eyes" doubly so is striking, and the resulting the tension is released interestingly by the antithesis of rising above the mountain's foot in a clause given its own emphasis by sentence inversion. | |
| 464. Author unknown Chinese incense (hakuwakô) | |
| hana-goto ni akazu chirashishi kaze nareba ikusobaku wa ga ushi to ka wa omou | Given there's a wind that tirelessly scatters all of the flowers, how much resentment, then, do you imagine I feel? |
| The last (and smallest) group of hidden topics are various non-living things. This one, a blend of scents, could colorfully be translated as "Perfume of a Hundred Harmonies" -- but only if you're willing to let it be used by Lady Plum-Blossom and her ilk. It's possible to read either that the speaker is not tired of the flowers or that the wind isn't tired of blowing -- the latter feels less strained, but the former is a common interpretation, and either way the other meaning remains as an undertone. The question, for what it's worth, is marked as rhetorical. | |
| 465. Ariwara no Shigeharu Paper marbling (suminagashi) | |
| harugasumi naka shi kayoiji nakariseba aki kuru kari wa kaerazaramashi | But if there weren't a pathway that travels through the mists of springtime, the geese that come in autumn would not be returning north. |
| "Non-living things" is an elastic category: suminagashi is the process of marbling paper (or cloth), rather than the result. Commentaries compare the scene of mists breaking up to the marble pattern, which feels like straining to me. Translator additions: "North" is interpretive, while "that travels" is an attempt to reproduce the effect of an emphatic marker on naka, "within/through." | |
| 466. Miyako no Yoshika Embers (okibi) | |
| nagare'izuru kata dani mienu namidagawa oki himu toki ya soko wa shiraremu | A river of tears so deep the source it flows from can't even be seen -- when this ocean has dried up, will its bottom then be known? |
| Miyako no Yoshika was the literary sobriquet (meaning "good fragrance of the capital") of scholar, historian, and poet-in-Chinese Sukune no Kotomichi (834-879), whose erudition was famous enough to become the subject of literary anecdotes, many involving Sugewara no Michizane. This is his only poem in the Kokinshu. ¶ Hiding "embers" in a decidedly drippy poem looks to me like deliberate irony. This is the only place in the Kokinshu where a "river of tears" is appears outside of the love poems; given that usage, we have here an exaggeratedly weeping lover claiming to be completely unnoticed by absolutely everyone. Untranslatable wordplay: soko, "bottom/bed," can also be heard as "that place," referring back to the wellspring. "So deep" is interpretive, added to clarify the ocean metaphor. | |
| 467. Ôe no Chisato Chimaki | |
| nochimaki no okurete ouru nae naredo ada ni wa naranu tanomi to zo kiku | Though these are seedlings of late-sown rice whose planting and growth were delayed, it won't be fruitless to rely upon these fruits of the field. |
| Chimaki is sticky rice wrapped in bamboo or similar leaves and steamed, eaten for the festival of the Fifth of the Fifth Month (still observed as the Dragon Boat Festival in China and Children's Day in Japan), giving something of an associative connection between topic and poem. Pivot-word: ta no mi meaning "fruit/grain of the field" / tanomi meaning "request/depend on." I replicate something of the doubling effect by rendering ada ni, "in vain," as "fruitless." It's possible to read this (by mishearing mi as refering to himself) as a lover's coded protestation of faithfulness, with the late growth being of the speaker's feelings. The original has interesting aliteration in the first three lines, which I couldn't reproduce. | |
| 468. Archbishop Shôhô Composed when someone told him to write a poem starting with "ha," with "ru" at the end, and including "nagame" (scenery). | |
| hana no naka me ni aku ya tote wakeyukeba kokoro zo tomo ni chirinuberanaru | Because I, thinking "How could I tire of looking?" passed through the flowers, it feels like my heart indeed has scattered away with them. |
| Shôhô or Shôbô (832-909, lay name Prince Tsunekage, a 6th-generation descendent of Emperor Tenji) founded Daigo Temple in 874 as well as the now-extinct Toyama school of esoteric Shingon Buddhist practice. This is his only poem in the Kokinshu. ¶ The book ends with another kind of acrostic, though the first+last syllable game doesn't seem to have been as popular as hidden topics or start-of-line acrostics. The two syllables together make haru, "spring," the time of the poem. The hidden topic nagame could mean "prospect/view," "long/pensive gaze," or "long rain," all of them spring topics (see #113) that fit the content. Slight mistranslation: beranaru usually indicates conjecture based on visual evidence, but "feels like" is more clear in English than "seems that." Being distracted by the beauties of the world is, of course, a failing in Buddhism, making this a nicely orthodox sentiment from a clergyman. Compare #132. | |
And with that, we're through half the books of the Kokinshu, if not quite yet half the poems. Next up: the first of five books of love poems -- a topic as important as the four seasons. Expect it in six months or so. (ETA: This wasn't completed.)
(Index for this series)
---L.
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Date: 7 November 2013 09:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 7 November 2013 10:13 pm (UTC)---L.