Kokinshu Book XI: Love 1 (469-480) [incomplete]

[larryhammer]

So. :scuffs floor: Yeah. This is late. Over a decade late.

See, back when I was translating classical Japanese, I got a dozen poems into book XI of the Kokinshu before life pivoted me into learning Chinese. (Parenthood brings changes.) Which means I never got around to compiling those fragments—leaving them orphans not on my index of Japanese translations. So purely for the bookkeeping, here they are. Full disclosure: except for one wording tweak, these are unrevised reposts from the original posts. That said, without double-checking my understanding of the originals, I’m as happy as I ever am with the texts.

469.  Author unknown Topic unknown.
hototogisu naku ya satsuki no ayamegusa ayame mo shiranu koi mo suru ka na	The little cuckoo is crying, ah!, and sweet-flags     in the Fifth Month— alas, feeling this longing whose sweet cause I do not know.
Thus starts the first book (of five) of love poetry. Just as the seasonal books are organized chronologically, so are these, following the phases of an idealized love affair—beginning here with the first intimations of love. The poem is very much in the traditional manner and would not have been out of place in the Manyoshu. And speaking of traditions, back in book III we saw the summertime cuckoo used as an occasion for pensiveness, an association created by love poems such as this. Pivot-doublet: ayame = “sweet-flag” (an early summer lily that resembles an iris) / “(logical) reason/source.” Commentaries debate whether to understand this as the onset of ever being in love—a first love. The speaker, btw, isn’t gendered by context.
470.  Sosei (Topic unknown.)
oto ni nomi kiku no shiratsuyu yoru wa okite hiru wa omoi ni aezu kinubeshi	I, just hearing rumors, and white dew on chrysanthemums:     we both arise at night, by day can’t endure longing in her sun and waste away.
In direct contrast to the previous, this is a highly wrought poem in the epitome of the Kokinshu manner, with two or three pivot-words. The clear ones are kiku meaning “hear” / “chrysanthemum,” which joins the introductory first line to the rest, and okite meaning “settle” (for the dew) / “wake” (for the speaker). The disputed one is omo(h)i = “longing” / hi = “sun,” which if accepted results in two simultaneous readings of the last three lines: “(dew) settles at night and, in the day, cannot last in the sun and vanishes” and “(I) am awake at night and, in the day, cannot last these longings and waste away.” Despite the complication this creates (and that it means redundantly including both “by day” and “the sun”), the implied comparison feels like the heart of the poem, so I stretched for that at the expense of literal accuracy. This starts a run of poems on love “before seeing,” provoked by reports of the beloved—courtly decorum required aristocratic ladies not show their faces to any men outside their family, making rumors about her all but required to start the ball rolling, especially on the man’s side.
471.  Ki no Tsurayuki (Topic unknown.)
yoshinogawa iwanami takaku yuku mizu no hayaku zo hito o omoisometeshi	Swift as the water down the Yoshino River,     its waves high upon the rocks—so was my starting to long for that person.
A return to the the traditional manner of #469. How seriously should we take the claim that the anthology’s lead editor didn’t know why he wrote something? This is generally taken as evidence that “not known” often means “rather not say.” Pivot-word: hayaku is “swiftly” for the water and for the speaker’s falling in love—the effect being an implied comparison, requiring just a couple additional English particles to make explicit. “Starting to” uses an interesting idiom, somu, meaning literally to “dye”—while it’s a general-use auxiliary verb, the image of staining one’s heart with longing is an overtone, one used more directly in other love poems. Here, however, dyeing clashes with the tempestuous imagery, making it hard for this clever and polished assertion of passion to be convincing.
472.  Fujiwara no Kachion (Topic unknown.)
shiranami no ato naki kata ni yuku fune mo kaze zo tayori no shirube narikeru	Yet even for ships that travel without a trace     into the white waves, the very winds are, I know, bringing word of where to go.
On the literal level, winds guide ocean-going ships into port. However, winds can also be, and in poetry often are, a symbol for rumors about one’s beloved—a sense here reinforced with a pun: tayori can mean “tidings” as well as “reliance.” Even ships get this help, but the speaker, it’s implied, has heard nothing.
473.  Ariwara no Motokata (Topic unknown.)
otowayama oto ni kikitsutsu ōsaka no seki no konata ni toshi o furu ka na	While I keep hearing of you through these whispers     from Mount Wing-Whisper, down here near Meeting-Hill Gate I am, ah!, passing the years.
For Otowa (“wing-sound”) and Ōsaka (“meeting-hill”), see #142 and #374, respectively; they are close together in the hills southeast of the capital. More heavy-handed wordplay by Motokata: the oto of Otowa being a pivot-doublet for its meaning of “sound/rumor” —I loosely translate Otowa’s name to replicate the effect. “Of you” is, as often, interpretive, with the pronoun chosen as much for gender-neutrality as anything.
474.  (Ariwara no Motokata) (Topic unknown.)
tachikaeri aware to zo omou yoso nite mo hito ni kokoro o okitsu shiranami	Over and over— My heart’s fixed on that person:     even when elsewhere I am thinking, “how precious!” —like white waves in the offing.
To my surprise, this time Motokata manages to achieve not bad—no better than ye standard Kokinshu poem, but competent. (That puts him at 2 out of 9 so far.) Pivot-word: okitsu means “set” one’s heart upon / “off-shore,” and the latter sense forms an image association with “white waves” and “repeatedly.” The effect of framing the main statement with those last two phrases, which ordinarily would make a preface, is important enough to warrant scrambling the main statement to replicate.
475.  Ki no Tsurayuki (Topic unknown.)
yo (no) naka wa kaku koso arikere fuku kaze no me ni minu hito mo koishikarikeri	Isn’t it always like that in this world of ours:     I long for someone I cannot see any more than I can the blowing wind.
More wind as symbols of rumors about one’s beloved, here used indirectly. This, like the next couple poems, uses an old-fashioned style of direct statement of emotions, here bound up with a skillful use of image and symbol.
476.  Ariwara no Narihira On the day of the archery meet of the Right Horse Guards, when a woman’s face was faintly visible through the lowered blinds of a carriage across the way, he wrote and sent her:
mizu mo arazu mi mo senu hito no koishiku wa aya naku kyou ya nagamekurasamu	Both not unseen and yet not seen—if I long     for such a person, will I be spending today uselessly lost in thought?
From rumors to tantalizing glimpses: aristocratic women traveled in ox-drawn carriages enclosed with hanging blinds to prevent them from being seen, or at least seen clearly. And here in the love poems, we find Narihira in his forte—with this, he evokes several emotions and shifting realities in a poem that sounds beautiful as well. The imperial Horse Guards held an annual ceremonial competition involving archery and horse-riding on successive days for the left and right divisions—with the Right Horse Guards, which Narihira commanded, holding theirs on the Sixth Day of the Fifth Month. This incident, including the woman’s reply (see next), also appears in both Tales of Ise and (with a different reply) Tales of Yamato, suggesting it had strong contemporary interest—which may simply reflect Narihira’s reputation as a famous playboy.
477.  Unknown woman Reply.
shiru shiranu nani ka aya naku wakite iwamu omoi nomi koso shirube narikere	Knowing, not knowing— why do you uselessly speak     of distinguishing this? It is love and only love that can act as your guide.
So decoding the poetic persiflage, Narihira asked, “Can I see you?” and she replied, “Why worry about seeing? If you really want me, you’ll find a way for us to meet!” This is about as direct a come-on as you’ll find in classical Japanese. Some commentaries claim that the hi, “fire,” of omo(h)i, “feelings,” here rendered as its common connotation “love,” suggests a torch lighting the way—and maybe it would to someone steeped in the tradition of the time.
478.  Mibu no Tadamine When he went to the Kasuga Festival, he sent this (after inquiring about her family) to the home of a woman who had come out to watch.
kasuga-no no yukima o wakete oiidekuru kusa no hatsuka ni mieshi kimi wa mo	Like those first grasses sprouting through the bare patches     amid the snowfall upon Kasuga Plain, so wert thou, ah!, scarcely seen.
After the old-fashioned direct statements of the previous couple of poems, this has a more sophisticated style, using an imagistic preface hinged upon a pivot-word (with the effect of an implied comparison). Exactly what the pivot is, however, is debated: clearly the preface ends with part of hatsuka ni, “scarcely,” but double-meaning could be either just ha = “leaf/blade” or hatsu = “first.” Arguments for the latter point out that “first/young greens” is a common metaphor for youth and beauty, making it even more of a compliment to the woman, and that Kasuga Plain was famous as a place for gathering them (see #17ff). The spring festival at Kasuga Shrine was, for what it’s worth, held in the Second Month of the lunar calendar (late March). The self-consciously archaic final exclamatory particles wa mo, which hadn’t been current since the capital was in nearby Nara, over a century earlier, warrant for once a bit of forsoothiness.
479.  Ki no Tsurayuki After going to where people were picking flowers, he wrote and sent this to the home of someone who had also been there.
yamazakura kasumi no ma yori honoka ni mo miteshi hito koso koishikarikere	Like mountain cherries that I but faintly discerned     through breaks in the mist— just so am I longing for someone I have barely glimpsed.
Gaps in curtains, in snow, and now broken mist. The headnote is gender-neutral but we’re to understand (through the cherry blossom imagery and placement among the love poems) the person was a woman. The phrase honoka ni mo miteshi, “even dimly seen,” is a pivot applying to both the prefatory flowers and the person longed for. As common for this construction, the effect is an implicit comparison. Untranslatable overtone: the mountain cherries on the slopes suggest a “flower of the high peak,” takane no hana, an idiom for someone unattainable, heightening (so to speak) his flattery.
480.  Ariwara no Motokata (Topic unknown.)
tayori ni mo aranu omoi no ayashiki wa kokoro o hito ni tsukurunarikeri	Such astonishment!— my longing isn’t even     a messenger, yet it has taken my heart and delivered it to her!
Motokata manages some syntactic play more skillfully than I expect of him, putting his “astonishment” in the middle line. The other bit of wordplay, of whether tsuku should be understood to mean “approach” the heart of his beloved or “entrust” his heart as one does a letter to a messenger, is more standard but no less tricky to render. In the end, I couldn’t replicate the former play, and for the latter rendered both senses—and regardless, neither trick makes this a convincing love poem.

Index of Japanese translations

---L.

Comments

[asakiyume]

Wow, great to see these. Haven't read any tanka in a while. I really like the yamazakura one (good old Ki no Tsurayuki!) and the first one with the ayame.

[larryhammer]

Tsurayuki isn't always emotionally convincing, but he is indeed reliable.

[sartorias]

These are really lovely!

[larryhammer]

I like them myself, when I took another look, which is why I reposted them.

[puddleshark]

Like mountain cherries
that I but faintly discerned
through breaks in the mist—
just so am I longing for
someone I have barely glimpsed.


Oh, this is beautiful. But they are all lovely - thank you!

[larryhammer]

Thankee.