Traditional Japanese Literature

by Haruo Shirane

  26. This poem reads almost as a response to the previous one. Although the poet is traveling frequently on the path of dreams, she also is becoming disillusioned with dreams as a substitute for the waking world. In Kokinshū, no. 553, it was dreams on which the poet had started to rely as a means of meeting her lover. Now, however, she realizes that the many dream encounters she has with him are not the equal of even a single glimpse of him in real life.

  27. This poem appears in the fifth and final book of love in the Kokinshū, which contains eighty-two poems on the failures and deceptions of love. In this context, we may read the poem as a comment on the fickleness of one person’s heart, a former lover who has lost interest in the poet, and on the unreliability of human feelings in the world at large, in which nothing is as it seems.

  28. The headnote identifies this poem as a response to one by another prominent poet of the early Heian period, Fun’ya no Yasuhide, a contemporary of Komachi who also is identified in the Kokinshū as one of the Six Poetic Immortals. The uki of ukigusa is a pivot word meaning both “floating” (of the waterweed) and “miserable” (the poet). The poet compares her unhappy self (mi) to the floating weed: both are adrift at the mercy of their surroundings. The “flowing waters” represent the message from Yasuhide. The poet implies that like a weed drifting on the water, she would journey to the provinces in response to his invitation. This poem appears in a book of the Kokinshū that includes many poems about the uncertainties and disappointments of life in the mundane world.

  29. Burton Watson translated other poems about Michizane’s children in Japanese Literature in Chinese: Poetry and Prose in Chinese by Japanese Writers of the Early Period (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975), 1:90–91, 113.

  30. Literally, he hears “the morning clepsydra.” In this poem, Michizane plays with perceptions in a manner that, adopted from Chinese models, became characteristic of the waka of his day. In this case, instead of seeing the dawn, he hears it, as measured by the clock and sounded by the bell.

  31. Pretending to confuse snow with floss or clouds, Michizane again is using a Chinese technique, a form of metaphor, that became common in waka.

  32. Michizane breathes on his hands to warm them as he drafts official documents, which would have been written in Chinese, Michizane’s specialty.

  33. Michizane’s grandfather Kiyokimi (770–843) had served as professor of literature and in 839 was awarded the exalted third rank. Michizane’s father, Koreyoshi (812–880), after also serving as professor of literature, became a high-ranking noble (kugyō) in 872 when he was given the office of consultant (sangi), placing him among the highest officials in the land.

  34. Shūsai or tokugōshō, sometimes translated as “advanced students of literature,” were specially selected students who prepared for the civil service examination. Michizane was given this title at the unusually young age of twenty-three.

  35. The fourth year of the Gangyō era (880), three years after Michizane had been named professor of literature. Normally there were two professors of literature, and at the time of his appointment, his former civil service examiner was the other one. Apparently, Michizane did not begin giving formal lectures until after the senior professor had died in 879.

  36. In earlier times, a ri had been approximately 1770 feet, but around Michizane’s day an alternative “great li” of approximately 2.5 miles also was used. In literary works, phrases such as “a thousand ri” were commonly used to mean simply “a great distance.”

  37. In the Han dynasty, Su Wu was a captive of barbarians for nineteen years. He attached to a goose’s leg a message written on a piece of cloth. The emperor shot the goose, learned of Su Wu’s misfortune, and sent troops to rescue him.

  38. Prince Dan of Yan, held hostage by the king of Qin, was told he could return home when crows’ heads turned white and horses grew horns. When that happened in response to his prayers, he was allowed to go home.

  39. “Songs” is a translation of the word uta, which literally means “song” but was also used to refer to Japanese poetry, as opposed to Chinese (which was called shi). Tsurayuki, the author of the Kana Preface, plays on both senses of the word throughout this passage. The metaphor “leaves of words” depends on a conventional pun, linked here to the metaphor of the heart (kokoro, or “heart/mind”) as a seed.

  40. The poem plays on a discrepancy between the official lunar and the unofficial solar calendars. Risshun, the first day of spring by the solar calendar, always occurs on February 4 or 5 (by the Gregorian calendar). In the lunar calendar, the new year begins on the day of the new moon, variably between January 21 and February 19. Hence about once every two years, the (solar) first day of spring preceded the (lunar) New Year’s Day. The theme of “time out of joint” is pervasive in early classical waka, often (see Kokinshū, nos. 2 and 3) hinging on a contrast between convention and perception. Some medieval exegetes interpreted this poem as a compact allegory of the chiasmus of “old” and “new,” alluding to the Kokinshū editors’ apparent program of thoughtfully intercalating old (late eighth and early to mid-ninth century) poems with new (late ninth to early tenth century).

  41. Dates unknown. Motokata was a grandson of Narihira, but little is known about his career. He is the author of fourteen poems in the Kokinshū.

  42. The topic calls for the “Anticipation of Spring,” never soon enough. The theme is an implied contrast between the calendar, which has announced the arrival of spring and its warm breezes, and the conceit of sleeves wet with water from the previous year’s summer that are still frozen with winter’s cold. Although the promise of spring remains unfulfilled, by taking the compass of three successive seasons, the poet affirms his faith in the calendar.

  43. His dates are thought to be around 870 to 945. Despite his relatively humble social status, Tsurayuki was, in his later years, among the most highly respected poets of his age. One of four poets commissioned to compile the Kokinshū, he was effectively its editor in chief, and the collection closely conforms to his tastes. As the author of the Kana Preface to the anthology, the single most canonical statement of the principles of native Japanese poetry, his influence on the tradition was immense and remained unquestioned until the end of the nineteenth century. As a poet, he was a consummate technician as well as the author of many of the most memorably lyrical poems in the anthology.

  44. The topic is “Lingering Snow.” The sequence has established the arrival, by the calendar, of spring. Yoshino, with mountains among the deepest in the Yamato region and the vicinity of the capital, was a poetic place-name (utamakura) noted for both heavy snowfall and cherry blossoms. The poet complains (complaint is among the most common moods of Kokinshū poetry) that despite the official arrival of spring, the mists (much less the flowers) of spring have yet to appear.

  45. Anonymous” poems are those for which the editors did not have a reliable attribution—in most cases, poems of the late eighth or early ninth century circulated orally—or for which they had reasons not to identify the author in a collection commissioned by the emperor and subject to his approval.

  46. In the context of its presumed source, the personal collection of Fujiwara no Kanesuke (d. 933), this is a love poem sent to a woman facetiously complaining that incense, redolent of apricot (or plum) blossoms, burned to scent her robes, has infused his own, and that their relationship has thus been discovered by members of his household. That his complaint is facetious is attested by the evidence that he sent this poem to the woman (who knows better) by way of stating his intention not to be dissuaded. The editors signal their intentions to reread this as a seasonal poem on the topic “Plum Blossoms,” not as a love poem, by listing it as anonymous.

  47. Mist and cherry blossoms are the preeminent images of spring. The placement of this poem at the beginning of the second book of spring asserts that the imminent fading of the blossoms, perhaps showing through a screen of (faint pink, by Chinese poetic convention) mist, marks the passage beyond the m
idpoint of the season and thus appropriately opens the second movement of spring. This is the first of a sequence of twenty-one poems on the topic “Falling Cherry Blossoms.” (Concerning the importance of topical sequences in the Kokinshū, see n. 63.)

  48. It is because the blossoms are bound to fall so soon that they are so admired (see Kokinshū, no. 71). If one could command them, with a word, to last, their fragile beauty would be diminished. In an earlier context (presumably the late eighth or early ninth century), the anonymous poet’s intention may have been, instead, to suggest that if only the blossoms would stay, on demand, nothing could surpass their beauty. Such a reading, though grammatically less plausible, is accepted by some medieval and modern commentators.

  49. This is a statement of what became the normative aesthetic and ethos of the cherry blossom as a symbol of the fragility of beauty (and the beauty of fragility): it is better to die early than to linger in this world and suffer the consequences, among them an awareness of the vanity of human aspirations and of the futility of living on.

  50. Entranced by clouds of falling blossoms, a traveler has lost track of the way home and is resigned to spending the night in an unfamiliar village.

  51. In ninth-century usage and later, the phrase utsusemi no yo (this fleeting world), with its image of the discarded shell of a cicada, refers to this world of (human) existence as empty and insubstantial or as mutable and ephemeral. The force of the simile in this poem draws on the second sense.

  52. A long sequence (forty-one poems) on the topic “Cherry Blossoms Blooming and Falling,” extending from the latter part of the first book of spring through the beginning of the second book, is followed by two shorter sequences on the topics “Blossoming Flowers” and “Falling Flowers.” These are poems on late spring flowers. This poem concludes the sequence on “Blossoming Flowers.”

  53. This is the first in the sequence of poems on the topic “Falling Flowers.” The speaker seems to fear acquiring a reputation for extreme sensitivity, a quality in which Heian poets took some pride.

  54. Late ninth to early tenth century. The author of sixty poems in the Kokinshū, one of the compilers of the anthology, and, along with Tsurayuki, a master of compositional technique.

  55. Under the topic “Falling Flowers,” this is the first of a subsequence of six verses on “Warblers Lamenting the Blossoms.” The speaker, viewing the flowers in the meadows where trees are in bloom, finds that in each meadow, warblers are crying and the wind is blowing petals from the boughs and thus infers the relation between the two events. The sense is not that the speaker was drawn by the warblers’ cries to seek their cause.

  56. The topic is “Early Summer.” The flowers of the garden are mirrored in the surface of the pond, their reflection perhaps superimposed on waves raised by an early summer breeze. The mountain cuckoo (hototogisu) is the dominant image of the brief book of summer in the Kokinshū, appearing in twenty-five of the thirty-four poems and associated, in the Kokinshū and after, with the Fifth and Sixth Months of the lunar calendar. Summer begins in the Fourth Month, and the cuckoo has not yet begun to sing. Wisteria blossoms are a late spring/early summer image.

  57. The most notable poet of the Man’yōshū.

  58. The cuckoo was thought to act, like various birds in many traditional cultures, as a messenger between this and other worlds. The intended recipient of the message here may be one who has entered the afterworld, since the cuckoo was also believed to be an intermediary between the living and the dead, or a recluse who has departed from this mundane world to practice austerities in the mountains, the proper abode of the mountain cuckoo (yama-hototogisu) addressed in the poem.

  59. A member of the Ki family, empress to Ninmyō and sister of Ki no Aritsune. Dates uncertain.

  60. The implied topic is “Autumn Wind.” One prevalent theme of early autumn poems, those of the opening of the first book of autumn in the Kokinshū and others later in the classical tradition, is surprise at how quickly and stealthily the season arrives. Surprise is registered here by hyperbole: only a day ago, so it seems, the rice seedlings were planted, yet today they are ready for harvesting. The word soyogite (tremble) is a weak onomatopoeia of susurration.

  61. The topic is Tanabata, Festival of the Herdsman and the Weaver, lovers who were transformed into the stars Altair and Vega in the Milky Way (River of Heaven) and condemned to meet only one night in the year, the seventh of the seventh lunar month. Autumn mist (kiri), a strongly seasonal image, is the counterpart of spring mist or haze (kasumi). The implied speaker may be either of the two stars or both.

  62. The mitate (visual metaphor) of dewdrops as evanescent jewels is a familiar one. Dew is closely associated with the bush clover (hagi), a distinctive autumn flower.

  63. Sequences (shidai) of poems on the same topic, composed of subtle variations in thematic treatment, are the building blocks that make the Kokinshū a coherent and readable text rather than a simple collection of poems arranged topically. Medieval commentators devoted considerable attention to the editors’ composition of such sequences (prominent in the seasonal and love books), which come into view only when one poem is read as a response to a preceding poem or series of poems. In this instance, the reader is invited to reread no. 222 against no. 223 and weigh the differences between a conceit and a more literal treatment of the same topic: gemlike droplets of dew on leaves or petals of bush clover.

  64. The name Otowa Mountain, a pillow word, makes a pun on the word oto, meaning “sound.” This is the eighth of a series of nineteen poems on the topic “Autumn Leaves,” which opens the second book of autumn. Brightly colored autumn leaves is also the dominant image of the latter part of the season, appearing in more than half the poems in the book. The poem suggests, retrospectively, the idea of nature anticipating the calendar (compare no. 3 and many other spring poems in which the season is perceived as falling behind the calendar).

  65. The theory underlying this and the following poems is that dewdrops (together with frost and raindrops of cold autumn showers) are the cause of the coloration of leaves. “White dew” is often a near synonym for “dew,” but the specific association of autumn with the color white (following Chinese theories of the “five elements”) is exploited here to underscore the paradox. The “thousand different shades” is conventional hyperbole. The primary colors of autumn foliage in classical poetry were red, yellow, and rust.

  66. Died early tenth century. Noted for his poems for illustrated standing screens (byōbu-uta).

  67. Again the theory that dew causes the leaves to change color is invoked. The conceit is that because the wild geese, flying south in autumn, cry, they must shed tears and that since tears are a poetic homologue of dew, those (figurative) tears might combine forces with the dew to intensify the coloration of the grasses of the fields.

  68. Late ninth to early tenth century. One of four poets ordered to compile the Kokinshū.

  69. This poem, a variation on the theme of Kokinshū, no. 257, also is a tentative response to that poem’s question: it must be something in the way that dew settles on the leaves that accounts for its varied effects: leaves of differing colors.

  70. This is the penultimate poem in the sequence of nineteen poems on the topic “Colored Autumn Leaves” (momiji), which opens the second book of autumn. This sequence is followed by thirteen poems on “Chrysanthemum Flowers,” but the topic of momiji is then resumed under the rubric “Falling Leaves” (rakuyō) in a twenty-five-poem sequence that extends to nearly the end of the book. A parallel is thus established between the sequential arrangement of poems on the topic “Cherry Blossoms” in the two books of spring and these on “Autumn Leaves.”

  71. An allusion to a verse by the Chinese poet Tao Qian (d. 427), cited by early Kamakura commentators, may have been intended here, but as the renga poet Sōgi and his teacher Tō no Tsuneyori asserted, recognition of the allusion adds nothing to an understanding of the poem in the Kokinshū context. The “figure” mentioned in
the headnote is most likely a model placed on a tray of sand representing, in miniature, a landscape.

  72. Of the same lineage as Tsurayuki, he was another of the four poets ordered to compile the Kokinshū. He died early in the tenth century, before the collection was completed.

  73. Mimuro, a noun meaning “sacred grove” or “dwelling place of the gods,” became the name of a mountainous area that was the site of Tatsuta Shrine, above the Tatsuta River. Kamunabi (mountains “where gods dwell”) refers to the same area, noted for its autumn leaves. The poet speculates on the unseen cause of a very visible (and desirable) effect: a brocade of red and yellow leaves covering the Tatsuta River, downstream from Mimuro.

  74. The speaker asks why the autumn moon casts its light so starkly (sayaka) and proposes an answer: that the moon’s intention is to intensify our perception of the falling of leaves and thus of the passage of the season toward winter. It is not “fallen leaves” but “leaves (now) falling” that the speaker sees so clearly.

  75. A familiar mitate (visual metaphor), autumn leaves seen as a cloak of brocade, dresses another well-worn trope, the wind making itself visible, to create something new. Many of the “new” poems in the Kokinshū, those of the late ninth and early tenth centuries, are based on permutations and recombinations of rhetorical precedents rather than on the invention of unfamiliar conceits.

  76. Frost and dew are taken to be the agents causing the autumn leaves to turn (see Kokinshū, no. 257) and weaving from them a multicolored brocade. “Scatter” (chiru) refers to the falling of the leaves.

  77. Dates are 805 to 853. A noted calligrapher and musician.

  78. The poem alludes to a passage in the biography of Xiang Yu in the Han shu—“to achieve wealth and glory, and not return to one’s native village, is like wearing brocades by night.”—which became proverbial for an advantage put to no use.