45. Part of a longer sequence of poems on the topic “Flowering Plums,” the first three belong to a cluster of four poems (no. 46 is omitted here) drawing on images of plum blossoms and the spring moon to evoke, indirectly, the famous love poem by Ariwara no Narihira—“Is there no moon? Is the spring not the spring of the past? I alone am as I was”—and to suggest the motif of longing for the past.
46. This verse was composed on the topic “Spring Dawn,” but the editors have taken advantage of the season words oborozukiyo (mist-shrouded moon) and kari (wild geese) to place the poem here as a link between a sequence of poems on the former and latter topics in turn. Regretting that the moon lingering at dawn must depart from the sky, the speaker takes the cries of the geese readying to depart for the north as empathetic with his own feelings, perhaps also taking the departing moon as emblematic of the geese’s plight.
47. Lines 1 and 2 in the translation offer a rational inference—that the cherry blossoms at the peaks of Yoshino must be falling—to explain something seemingly irrational: the startling image of white wind blowing down to the foot of the mountain. Yoshino was famous for both its relatively steep mountains and its cherry blossoms.
48. The awkward translation attempts to suggest the complex syntax of the poem, which yokes a series of words into overlapping images to suggest—by allusion to the “yesterday” and “today” of the base poem—a concrete succession of moments in time. The first image is a pale pink garden, “the color of cherry blossoms,” and then a pink spring wind blowing through the garden. No trace of the wind remains except for a carpet of pale pink petals, and the speaker wishes only for the tracks of a visitor, someone imaginative enough to share with the poet the illusion (via mitate) of the fallen flowers as a late spring snowfall. The base poem, an ironic reply to a poem chiding Ariwara no Narihira for visiting with even less frequency than the cherry blossoms, is by Narihira, Kokinshū, no. 63: “Had I not come today, and tomorrow they fell like snowflakes, though they did not melt, could I yet see them as blossoms? (Hardly.)” Teika’s poem changes the tone of key images of the base poem from ironic to elegiac while reversing Narihira’s irony to chide him for lacking the sensibility to mistake fallen flowers for snow. The link to the preceding poem, also on the topic of falling cherry blossoms, is the conceit of colored wind.
49. The fifth and last poem in a sequence on the topic “Changing Robes,” which had become the conventional opening topic for the book of summer in imperially commissioned anthologies. The honka, or base poem, is a well-known poem by Ono no Komachi, Kokinshū, no. 797: “All too visibly its color fades: the flower of the heart of one passing through this world of love.”
50. A granddaughter of Shunzei, Daughter of Shunzei (ca. 1171–ca. 1252) was apparently adopted by him as a daughter, hence the designation by which she is best known. She is the author of some of the most exquisitely contrived and technically innovative poems in the Shinkokinshū style. One of her poems was placed at the beginning of the second book of love of the Shinkokinshū at the express command of the retired emperor GoToba. Twenty-nine of her poems appear in the anthology.
51. This belongs to a series of ten poems on the topic “Autumn Evening” and is the first of three in particular that later became known as the famous sanseki (three evening poems) by Jakuren, Saigyō, and Teika, respectively. As of the twelfth century and after, this topic was considered especially challenging because the compound appeal of the season and of evening or dusk made it difficult to do justice to the topic, and it was especially difficult to do so inventively. Jakuren’s poem has been the subject of much interpretive debate. As do many poems of this era, it consists of an abstract assertion followed by a concrete observation with a soku (distanced link) relation between the first three and last two measures, a logical or rhetorical gap the reader is forced to explore. Evergreen trees seem impervious to the coming of autumn, but as dusk consumes the light, they fade into a monochrome perfectly consonant with the mood of an autumn evening.
52. The logic of this most famous of Teika’s poems has affinities with Jakuren’s preceding poem. In rejecting the familiar emblems of seasonal beauty—spring flowers and autumn foliage—in favor of a monochrome scene containing only a humble cottage by the shore, the poem has been taken to anticipate the minimalist aesthetics of sabi and wabi, associated later with the way of tea and the poetics of Shinkei and Bashō, among many others. Teika himself did not seem to consider this a particularly memorable poem and included it in neither Teika hachidaishō nor Hyakuban jika-awase, which include those poems he seemed most interested in preserving.
53. The base poem (honka) for this composition is Sosei, Kokinshū, no. 947: “Where might I find distaste for this world? In pastures and hills alike my heart yearns to stray.” Sosei’s poem, partly by its placement in the Kokinshū, Miscellaneous, book 2, clearly implies the familiar ethical dilemma of a Buddhist ascetic seeking to leave the world. That nuance is attenuated by the placement of Princess Shokushi’s poem here in the first book of autumn. The speaker’s “weariness” is due to the aesthetic conflict between the moon and the season of autumn in which it “dwells” (and shines most clearly, by the pun on sumu) or between beauty and sadness.
54. The logic of this verse places it in a category of conceit much favored by Shinkokinshū poets: as though X were not enough, here is the moon, or the wind, or the crying birds or insects, to bring something more.
55. This is an example of Teika’s ability to combine the techniques of ellipsis, verbal association, and allusion with strongly inventive figural language. The honka (base poem) is an anonymous love poem in the Kokinshū, no. 689: “Spreading her robe on a mat of rush, will she await me again tonight—the Maiden of Uji Bridge?” Aki no kaze (autumn’s wind) retains—from the honka—the conventional metaphorical sense of fading or sated passion, inevitably called forth by the phrase matsu yo (night of waiting). Allusive variation was usually expected to begin from a displacement across topical categories, as here from love to autumn. This poem was regarded as an example of Teika’s so-called new-fangled, unfounded Daruma (Zen) style, which provoked such anxiety among conservative critics.
56. The poem, one of Teika’s most admired, becomes fully intelligible only when the reader recalls the base poem in the Man’yōshū, vol. 3, no. 265: “How dismal this endless rain at Sano Crossing in Miwa no Saki, no trace of a house that might offer shelter.” Apart from the poetic place-name, Sano Crossing, none of the language of the base poem is introduced into Teika’s poem, and the season is changed (from autumn to winter and rain into snow). The primary connotation of the place-name, judging from a contemporary poetic lexicon, was “desolation,” signified by the absence of dwellings (the base poem is evidently the source of this association). Teika’s poem evokes the connotation with the phrase kage mo nashi (not a shadow), which in the context implies the absence of any building to cast a shadow (any shelter) but literally refers also to the setting: snowfall at dusk, a scene from which all shadow is, perforce, absent. The single most telling effect, however, is achieved by the absence in Teika’s poem of any emotional or evaluative word, as found in the base poem. It was a rule of late classical poetics that such words were to be avoided: a well-wrought poem could evoke a feeling or mood without naming it. Teika usually follows this rule, and in this instance it enables him to alter the tone of his own poem to distinct advantage: what was merely privative (steady rainfall and no shelter = desolation) in the base poem is inverted to become an occasion for exalted contemplation (absence of shelter forces the speaker’s attention toward the austere beauty of the setting).
57. Tama no o (literally, “a thread of beads or jewels”) was a familiar periphrasis for “(human) life.” Words linked to “thread … break” (tae) and “living on” (nagarae, or “extend, endure”) help invigorate the cliché.
58. This poem is based closely on Ki no Tsurayuki, Kokinshū, no. 606: “Keeping this longing hidden within is what hurts—with only me to hear
my sighs.”
59. This poem is based on the same base poem (Narihira’s “Is there no moon?”) to which nos. 44, 45, and 47 loosely allude. There is a difference in the treatment in this poem, which belongs to the same category (love) as the honka, but the allusion still is based on just the single phrase haru ya mukashi (of a spring now past).
60. The poet feigns the persona of a woman who waited past dawn for a faithless lover. Her sole consolation, the moon lingering after dawn, is marred by the thought that he may be enjoying the same moon’s light on his way home from another lover’s home.
61. This complicated net of puns and syllepses weaves at least three more or less distinguishable statements—two of them approximated in the translations—into one of the most tantalizing poems of the collection. For centuries, commentators have offered widely discrepant interpretations. The paratactic style exemplified here is close to that of the brief collection of admonitory poems, “Notes from the Future” (Miraiki), purportedly composed by Fujiwara no Teika to demonstrate what might happen if the more radical tendencies of the late-twelfth-century avant-garde were pursued to their limits.
62. “Seven Rarities and ten thousand treasures” here means “things of value.” The Seven Rarities of Buddhist texts are gold, silver, lapis lazuli, crystal, coral, agate, and clamshell.
63. Kiyomori, the leader of the Taira clan, had the capital moved from Kyoto to Fukuhara (now Kobe) in 1180.
64. It was Emperor Kanmu (r. 781–806) who actually relocated the capital from Nagaoka to Heian-kyō (Kyoto), in 794. Perhaps Chōmei saw the failed attempt to return the capital to the former capital, Nara—in 810, during the reign of Emperor Saga (r. 809–823)—as serving to establish the capital at Kyoto once and for all.
65. Empress Saimei (r. 655–661) built a temporary palace of logs in Kyushu in 661.
66. The people’s fears were realized when Minamoto no Yoritomo raised an army in the Eighth Month of 1180.
67. Yao was one of the legendary sage kings of antiquity in the Confucian tradition on which emperors were meant to model their rule.
68. According to the Kojiki (712) and Nihon shoki (720), Emperor Nintoku was the legendary sixteenth emperor of Japan who also had a reputation for sage rulership for his remittance of taxes every third year.
69. Chōmei probably borrowed the metaphor from The Essentials of Salvation (Ojōyōshū, 985), by Genshin (942–1017).
70. The last of the three Buddhist periods: the first is the age of the true law, during which enlightenment was possible and correct practice could be performed; the second is the age of the simulated law, during which correct practice could be performed and the Buddha’s teaching existed; and the last is the age of the degenerated law or latter age of the Buddhist law (mappō), during which only the Buddha’s teaching remained. In Japan, it was believed that mappō began in 1051.
71. Ninna Temple is a large Buddhist institution in northwestern Kyoto that was commissioned by Emperor Kōkō (830–887, r. 884–887) and built by Emperor Uda (867–931, r. 887–897) in 888. The temple maintained particularly close ties to the imperial family in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
72. The subject might be Ryūgyō; the text is ambiguous.
73. The earthquake hit on the ninth day of the Seventh Month, 1185.
74. Tōdai Temple is one of the seven great Nara temples and served as the head of the national temple system instituted in Nara times. It is famous for its large statue of Vairocana Buddha, known popularly as the Great Buddha.
75. Chōmei is probably referring to the death of his father, in 1172 or 1173.
76. Suō Naishi, Kin’yōshū, no. 581: “I cannot live here any longer, and I leave: like the grass of remembrance growing thickly at the eaves, this dwelling is lush with fond memories.”
77. A proper estate would have included guest quarters, storehouses, and other outbuildings.
78. Chōmei’s family were hereditary priests of the Tadasu Shrine, part of the Shimogamo complex of Shinto shrines, just north of the capital. His greatest disappointment seems to have been his failure to succeed to this position.
79. Chōmei implies that these five years were vain because even though he had taken Buddhist vows, he had not made any progress toward enlightenment. Ōhara lies to the north of the capital.
80. Southeast of the capital, in what is now Fushimi Ward, Kyoto.
81. It was believed that Amida Buddha presided over the Pure Land paradise to the west, where anyone who sought refuge in him by reciting his name would be reborn. Amida was thought to ride on lavender clouds when he came from his Pure Land to receive the dying.
82. The bodhisattva Fugen (Skt. Samantabhadra) is often shown seated on an elephant with six tusks, symbolizing the slow, steady progress with which one moves toward enlightenment.
83. The koto could be folded up, and the biwa (lute) disassembled, making them portable.
84. Although Chōmei uses “Toyama” as a proper noun here, the word also denotes “outer mountains,” or slopes near town, as opposed to “deep mountains” (miyama). The association of toyama with vines (masaki no kazura) derives from Anonymous, Kokinshū, no. 1077: “Deep in the mountains hail must be falling. Vines on the outer mountains have turned red.”
85. Chōmei alludes to an exchange between the Horikawa lady and the monk Saigyō (1118–1190). From the lady, Sankashū, no. 750; Gyokuyōshū, no. 2809: “Let us speak together now, in this world, and make a vow—oh cuckoo—be my guide on the mountain path of death.” Saigyō’s reply, Sankashū, no. 751: “The weeping cuckoo will sing to keep his vow with you if you set out upon the mountain path of death.”
86. Underlying this and the next two sentences is the Buddhist tradition of ascetic practice aimed at achieving correct action in speech, body, and mind. Chōmei suggests that because of his way of life, he cannot help but act correctly.
87. Okanoya was on the east bank of the Uji River, in what is now the city of Uji. Manzei (or Mansei), a poet who took Buddhist vows in 721, is best remembered for the waka to which Chōmei alludes: Shūishū, no. 1327: “To what shall I compare the world? Whitecaps behind a ship that rows out at dawn.”
88. The Xunyang River is in Jiangxi Province, China, where the poet Bo Juyi (772–846) wrote his famous Biwa Song. Gen Totoku (Minamoto no Tsunenobu, 1016–1097), poet and musician and founder of the Katsura school of biwa playing, lived in the village of Katsura, southwest of the capital.
89. “Autumn Winds” is a well-known piece of court music. “Flowing Spring” is a biwa composition reserved for specially initiated musicians.
90. Bo Juyi, Wakan rōeishū, no. 492: “A fine view has no particular master. Mountains belong to those who love mountains.”
91. Semimaru, said to have been a blind lutenist, and Sarumaru Dayū were early Heian poets to whom many legends have attached. “Tanakami” refers to the upper reaches of the Uji River.
92. Bo Juyi, Wakan rōeishū, no. 242: “On the fifteenth night, the glow of a new moon. Two thousand miles away, the heart of my friend.”
93. It was a convention of Chinese poetry that monkey cries are sad.
94. The priest Gyōki (Gyōgi), Gyokuyōshū, no. 2627: “When I hear the voice of the pheasant singing I think—is it my father? is it my mother?”
95. Saigyō, Sankashū, no. 1207; Gyokuyōshū, no. 2240: “Deep in the mountains the deer draws tamely near and I know how far I have withdrawn from the world.”
96. Saigyō, Sankashū, no. 1203: “Deep in the mountains there are no friendly birdsongs—the fearful call of the owl.”
97. Chōmei here echoes a basic tenet of Mahayana Buddhism, that the phenomena around us, lacking any independent, objective existence, exist only as concepts or distinctions constructed by our minds. His wording derives from a line in the Kegon (Skt. Avatamsaka) Sutra: “All things in the Three Worlds exist only in the one mind.” “The Three Worlds” are the world of desire, the world of form, and the world of formlessness, a division of the universe acco
rding to the level of enlightenment reached by the beings who exist in each realm. Human beings exist in the world of desire.
98. Zhuangzi, “Autumn Floods”: “Not being a fish, how can you know that the fish are happy?”
99. The Three Paths are Hells, the Animal Path, and the Path of Hungry Ghosts, into which human beings who had committed bad actions were thought to be reborn.
100. Vimalakirti (J. Yuima), the central figure of the sutra named for him, was a wealthy townsman who achieved enlightenment without becoming a monk and who welcomed the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī (J. Monjūshiri) and thousands of followers in a humble room that in Chinese and Japanese tradition was ten feet square. In the sutra, Vimalakirti demonstrates the doctrine of nonduality by remaining silent when asked to explain it.
101. Suddhipanthaka was the most foolish of the Buddha’s disciples, although in the end he, too, achieved enlightenment.
102. The passage has also been interpreted to mean, “Is it perhaps that you torment yourself as a result of your poverty?”
103. Ren’in is the name Chōmei received when he took Buddhist vows.
104. No dates are available for the priest Tōren, but he is known to have been an esteemed waka poet, active in the capital in poetic circles during the 1160s and 1170s. Nothing is known about Rengejō, but the thirteenth-century historical chronicle Skimmings One Hundred Times Tempered (Hyakurenshō) mentions a similarly named Rengejō (with one character written differently) as the prime mover in a group of eleven clerics who drowned themselves in the Katsura River in September 1176, on the day of the equinoctial full moon.
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