79. This is the last of a sequence of twenty-five poems on the topic “Falling Leaves” and one of three poems in that sequence that were composed for screen paintings (byōbu-uta). As medieval commentators noted in regard to such poems in the Kokinshū, the poet was generally expected to assume the point of view of a figure in the painting when composing a poem like this one.
80. The topic is “Autumn Fields.” For a similar confusion of dew with the tears of birds, see Kokinshū, no. 258. In this poem, the dew on the hut or its roof is a mitate for such tears. The “rice-bearing bird” (inaoose-dori), whose identity was debated in early commentaries, became one of the “Three Birds” of the “Secret Teachings of the Kokinshū,” a knowledge of which was requisite to formal recognition as a waka poet throughout most of the medieval and early Tokugawa periods.
81. Passage into Akashi Bay meant crossing the official gateway at Settsu Province from the inner to the outer provinces, and the implied topic is border crossing. This is one of the most often quoted and allegorically glossed poems of the Kokinshū and became one of a core of poems treated as having profoundly esoteric meanings within the “Secret Teachings of the Kokinshū.” Its reputation was enhanced, certainly, by the attribution to Hitomaro, venerated as one of the deities of the Way of poetry. One Nijō school commentary suggests that the poem, generally regarded as an allegory of the death of Prince Takechi, was deliberately placed by the editors in the book of travel rather than the book of mourning in order to free it from taboos attached to poems of mourning.
82. The speaker asks whether despair at unrequited love might cause his soul to depart from his body, leaving a reputation for having lived for nothing more than vain affection. In this context, the auxiliary particle of causation, kara, imposes an indecorous pun on the noun kara, meaning “empty shell” or “corpse.”
83. The topic, as in the previous poem, is “Unrequited Love” and extends the familiar conceit that tears can quench the flames of longing. In Kokinshū love poetry, the passion of unrequited love typically leads to resentment and tears of blood. This appears to be an exception.
84. In the vocabulary of classical poetry, which (as in this case) tends to conform to the calendar, autumn nights are longer than those of summer. Not long enough for love, however: the complaint is that the reality fails to live up to the name.
85. Active mid-ninth century. Almost nothing certain is known about Komachi except that she was indisputably the greatest female poet of her age. Some of her poems are among the most erotic in the classical tradition, and she set new standards for technical facility with the use of kakekotoba (pivot words and puns). See the section on Ono no Komachi.
86. Mitsune is quoted here as seconding Komachi’s judgment in the previous poem and emphasizes that the length of an autumn night is entirely relative.
87. From the “night” of the previous, poems, the time advances to morning (shinonome refers to the moments just before dawn), and the topic here and in the following series of poems is “Parting at Dawn” (kinuginu). Kinuginu (literally, “robes,” with the sense of “these robes and those”) refers to the custom of lovers sharing the clothes they were dressed in for use as bedding for the night, then separating their respective robes in the morning before parting.
88. This and the following two poems continue the theme “Parting at Dawn,” which extends through a sequence of about twelve verses.
89. The confusion of tears and rainfall was a cliché, but the poet renews it with the use of uncommon diction, kokitarete (drenched), and a pivot word making both rain and tears the subjects of the same verb, furisohochi (literally, “to fall and soak through”).
90. The arrival of dawn, conventionally announced by the crowing of a rooster, means that the lover who has been visiting for the night must depart, all too early. Anticipating the bird’s cry as well as her own, the speaker contrasts the implacability of time (and of convention) with the depth of her feelings.
91. Ariwara no Narihira (825–880) was a descendant of the imperial family. He had an unsuccessful political career but enjoyed great esteem as a poet and a reputation as an erotic adept. Many of his poems encompass a measure of ironic reflection which invites comparison with those of Ono no Komachi, a close contemporary. For more on Narihira as a legend and poet, see the section on The Tales of Ise.
92. The wording of the poem offers two logically opposed readings, depending on whether the verb “to be visible” is interpreted affirmatively (miete) or negatively (miede), a question the script in which the Kokinshū was recorded leaves undecided. A majority of commentators, medieval and modern, have preferred the direct irony of the negative reading reflected in the first of the two translations. Others have argued in favor of the more subtly ironic affirmative reading. A small minority suggest that the miete/miede crux is to be taken as a pun (kakekotoba), inviting the reader to suspend judgment between the two contrary readings and entertain the possibility that both may be accepted at once.
93. The belief that cherry trees are animate and sentient beings, invoked frequently in classical waka (and in no drama), likely drew force from folk-religious cults of cherry trees as local deities and further support from syncretic Tendai doctrines of the universal Buddha-mind. The apostrophe in this poem, addressed to the cherry trees, can thus be taken literally. This does not diminish the extremity of the conceit of black blossoms, meant to convey the burden of the speaker’s grief.
94. The poems gathered in the two books of miscellaneous topics are indeed diverse. A few, at the beginning of the first book, are celebratory, but most dwell on themes of disappointment, mortality, and loss. The speaker complains of a double bind: the imperative to flee the corruptive influences of civilization and seek detachment in the purity of the pastoral is undermined by the (eminently civilized) delights of nature, which prove to be no less a distraction from the path to ascetic withdrawal.
95. Active late ninth century. A master of the decorous irony taken to characterize the poetry of his age, Sosei was esteemed by contemporaries as a poet and courtier-cleric and is regarded as one of the leading poets of his age.
96. This and the following three poems, on the topic “Dwellings,” were treated in the medieval esoteric teachings as densely allegorical poems uttered by deities or immortals and framed as lessons based on syncretic Shinto-Buddhist and protonativist doctrine. In the sequence here, the poems were understood, on one level, as lamenting the moral corruption of society (suggested by the anticipated ruin of “my old home”) that has forced the gods and their Buddhist avatars to manifest themselves in the world and set things right.
97. One of the six “immortals” (kasen) singled out in the preface to the Kokinshū to exemplify the major traditions of waka. This is the only poem in this collection attributed to him, and almost nothing is known about his career.
98. This was likely meant as a parody of Komachi’s poem on the same topic (Kokinshū, no. 635). Poets of the late Heian era and after were puzzled by the term haikai (by which the editors of the Kokinshū probably meant “dissonant” poems using archaic or colloquial diction, or obtrusive, vaguely grotesque conceits), with good reason, since a fair number of poems not placed in the haikai section are similar to poems like this one. What marks this poem as haikai is the somewhat colloquial diction, not the topic or its treatment.
99. This could just as well be “the one who says he loves me.” It is not the diction so much as the conceit that marks this poem as haikai. The premise is that promises of love invite suspicion and, too often, lead to resentment. The phrase “poems of resentment” (urami no uta) became a synonym for “poems of love” (koi no uta) early in the classical waka tradition. For a somewhat more decorous variation on the same conceit, compare the poem in section 15 of The Tales of Ise: “I long to find a path to the depths of Mount Shinobu that I might fathom the secrets of another’s heart.” “Shinobu,” reputedly the name of a mountain in what is now Fukushima Prefecture and a poetic place-name (utama
kura), is also a verb meaning “to endure,” “conceal,” “long for,” and “remember.”
100. Narihira, Kokinshū, no. 410. In addition to meeting the condition proposed by his traveling companion, the poem contains several puns that could not be incorporated in the translation. Kitsutsu means both “coming” and “wearin.”; narenishi is both “accustomed to” and “grown fond o.”; tsuma is both “wife” and “he.”; haru means “to full [cloth.”; and harubaru means “far.”
101. The name Mount Utsu suggests the word for “reality” (utsutsu), and the first two lines of the poem are a preface leading to the word. At the time, people believed that someone who was thinking of them would appear in their dreams. The man’s failure to meet his beloved even in his dreams implies that the woman is not thinking of him.
102. That is, in summer.
103. The meaning of the word shiojiri, translated here as “cone of sand,” is disputed.
104. The implication is that a “capital bird” should know what is going on in the capital.
105. “Imperial huntsmen” were sent by the emperor to nearby provinces both to bring back game and to investigate the affairs of the provincial governments.
106. The high priestess was an unmarried princess chosen at the beginning of a new emperor’s reign to serve at the Inner Shrine at Ise, dedicated to the Sun Goddess Amaterasu.
107. Between 11:00 and 11:30 P.M.
108. Between 2:00 and 2:30 A.M.
109. Tears of blood” is a conventional metaphor for extreme grief.
110. A post held by Narihira.
111. Literally, “river of heaven.”
112. Ki no Aritsune (816–877) was Koretaka’s uncle and Narihira’s father-in-law.
113. These poems refer to the legendary Herdsman (the star Altair) and his wife, the Weaver Maid (the star Vega), who were separated by the River of Heaven (the Milky Way) and able to meet only once a year, on the seventh day of the Seventh Month (celebrated as the Tanabata Festival).
114. A waxing moon, about halfway between quarter and full.
115. Narihira was Yukihira’s half brother.
116. Narihira was the most celebrated male poet of the age. The claim here that he knows nothing about poetry may be taken as a ploy of modesty or an expression of distaste for having to compose a “banquet” poem on a set topic for the entertainment of officials of the Fujiwara lineage, his own lineage’s historical enemies. The irony of his denial sharpens that of the following poem.
117. The poem can be read allegorically as a sarcastic comment on the usurpation of imperial authority by the Fujiwara lineage—of which the fuji (wisteria) blossom was an emblem—at the expense of Narihira’s own Ariwara lineage, whose name is suggested in the phrase arishi, meaning “as things were” (translated here as “… ever before”). It can also be taken, in a more naive but still allegorical reading, as praise for the largesse of the Fujiwara hegemons.
118. The question is posed by one of the Fujiwara guests and calls attention to the ambiguity of the poem, which is far more sophisticated than was expected of a conventional banquet poem.
119. To find fault with the poem, reading it as veiled sarcasm despite the poet’s claim that he simply meant to praise the Fujiwara lineage’s success, would cast doubt on the loyalties of the critic rather than the poet.
120. This post, in the Ministry of Central Affairs, called for expertise in drafting official documents, and in fact Toshiyuki was one of the most acclaimed calligraphers of his time.
121. Toshiyuki assumes that it was the girl’s poem and not that of her employer, Narihira.
122. The text has “the man,” which refers here and later not to Narihira but to Toshiyuki. The word signals clearly that Toshiyuki is or will soon become the girl’s lover.
123. Rainfall was one of many familiar excuses men used to avoid visiting a wife or lover at night. Toshiyuki suggests that he is hoping to visit her tonight, but only if rain does not fall.
124. An alternative, less piquant interpretation of the last two lines would read: “but I never thought it might be yesterday or today.” This is the interpretation that most modern scholars and many premodern commentaries prefer and is grammatically simpler. A late-sixteenth-century commentary by Hosokawa Yūsai, for example, states indignantly of the reading taken as the basis of our translation that it is “very improper” (or “impudent” [ooki ni kitanashi]), implying that it violates the aesthetic of imprecision associated with postclassical ideals of elegance.
125. Originally given by the emperor to nobility of the fifth rank and above. The cap was small, round, and black with a protuberance sticking up in the back and a wide, stiff ribbon hanging down the back.
126. One of the officials in the emperor’s private office, which was in charge of matters relating to the emperor and his palace.
127. A festival day marked by banquets held beside garden streams and by ritual purification. It was also known as the Peach Festival (Momo no sekku).
128. A room with a large table adjoining the imperial dining room.
129. According to traditional Chinese beliefs, the northeast was the unlucky direction. The sliding screen “protected” this room from the northern veranda of the palace by scaring away any evil spirits that might be lurking in the vicinity.
130. Korechika, the elder brother of the empress, who was appointed to major counselor in 992.
131. From the Man’yōshū.
132. A famous poem attributed to the Korean scholar Wani and later to Emperor Nintoku. Children in the Heian period were taught the poem for writing practice.
133. Fujiwara no Yoshifusa, Kokinshū, no. 52.
134. One of the frequent inauspicious days determined by the masters of divination, when, according to current superstition, it was essential to stay indoors and, as much as possible, to abstain from all activities, including eating, sexual intercourse, and even such seemingly innocuous acts as reading a letter.
135. These nets were designed for catching whitebait during the winter.
136. Dresses of this color were worn only during the First Month or early spring.
137. Scholarly activities, like most other specialized occupations, tended to run in families, and they were not considered suitable for girls.
138. When a master of divination informed someone that a certain direction was “blocked” by one of the invisible, moving deities central to Heian superstition, he or she might circumvent the danger by first proceeding in a different direction. Then after stopping on the way at an intermediate place and staying there at least until midnight, that person would continue to the intended destination.
139. The two main types of formal letters were “knotted” and “twisted.” Both were folded lengthwise into a narrow strip; but whereas the knotted kind was knotted in the middle or at one end, the twisted kind was twisted at both ends and tended to be narrower.
140. The aim of the exorcist was to transfer the evil spirit from the afflicted person to the medium, usually a young girl or a woman, and to force it to declare itself. The exorcist used various spells and incantations to make the Guardian Demon of Buddhism take possession of the medium. When he was successful, the medium would tremble, scream, have convulsions, faint, or behave as if in a hypnotic trance. The spirit would then declare itself through her mouth. The final step was to drive the spirit out of the medium.
141. One watch was the equivalent of two hours.
142. Herbal balls: during the Iris Festival (Tango no sekku) on the fifth day of the Fifth Month, various kinds of herbs were bound into balls and put into round cotton or silk bags, which were decorated with irises and other plants, as well as with long, five-color cords. They were then hung on pillars, curtains, and the like to protect the inhabitants of the house from illness and other misfortunes. Hare-sticks, three-inch sticks with long, colored tassels, were hung on pillars in the palace and in the houses of the nobility to keep away evil spirits.
143. A white underrobe w
as normally worn only in the summer months; the Eighth Month was the second month of autumn.
144. Men’s informal outdoor costume, originally worn for hunting.
145. A black, lacquered headdress worn by men on the top of the head and secured by a mauve silk cord that was fastened under the chin.
146. An Iyo blind is a rough type of reed blind manufactured in the province of Iyo on the Inland Sea. A head blind is a more elegant type of blind whose top and edges were decorated with strips of silk. It also had thin strips of bamboo along the edges and was therefore heavier than ordinary blinds.
147. Sneezing was a bad omen, and it was normal to counteract its effects by reciting some auspicious formula, such as wishing long life to the person who had sneezed.
148. Etiquette demanded that in the presence of the emperor or empress, one referred to oneself by one’s name rather than by the first-person singular.
149. Elegant colored paper that gentlemen carried in the folds of their clothes.
150. Sumo-wrestling tournaments usually took place in the imperial palace every year at the end of the Seventh Month, with skilled fighters being specially recruited from the provinces.
151. Drawing faces on melons was a popular pastime, especially for women and children.
152. That is, cut at shoulder length.
153. Literally, “comparison of objects”: a game played by two teams, left and right. Among the “objects” used in these games were flowers, roots, seashells, birds, insects, fans, and paintings.
154. The empress is referring to some famous lines in a poem by Bo Juyi: “The sun has risen in the sky, but I idly lie in bed. In my small tower-room the layers of quilts protect me from the cold. Leaning on my pillow, I wait to hear Yiai’s temple bell. Pushing aside the blinds, I gaze upon the snow of Xianglu peak …”
155. The Chinese historical work Shi ji (J. Shiki).
156. A pillow book, a term referring to a collection of notebooks kept in some accessible but relatively private place and in which the author would from time to time record impressions, daily events, poems, letters, stories, ideas, descriptions of people, and the like.
Traditional Japanese Literature Page 40