Same, I immediately liked 22 precisely because of what made it so unpopular at the time.
exactly, yes. Sorry, should have specified 
That being said, I don’t think I much liked the rest of this week’s selection in comparison. Not quite sure why, although it’s probably partially because I suddenly got super busy and just didn’t have the time to properly sit down with them.
Yeah that happened to me last week. This week was much better for me in getting into the “okay, I’m going to wind down now and just go through as much Heian poetry as feels good” mode and it suited me better.
In an unrelated vein for the rest of the thread, I found it a very neat observation that the majority of the haiku in the collection are about autumn. I wonder if that is the compiler’s prejudice, or typical of the era. It seems like it would be an easy thing to make a program that could get statistics to compare, using a digital kigo dictionary and digital archives of other major anthologies from Japanese history. In fact, I’d be surprised if somebody hasn’t already done so. Does anyone know what the major academic search engines in Japanese are (like EBSCO host or JSTOR are for English), or maybe have a friend who went to university in Japan whom they could ask?
GOSH I WISH I KNEW THE SLIGHTEST THING ABOUT CODING
But… JSTOR is a digital library, not a search engine?
As for search engines, I’ve only heard of google scholar in Japan (I’ve been in academia here for more than a decade, but I’m just one data point anyway).
As for a digital library, there’s j-stage.
www.jstage.jst.go.jp
There is cinii
https://ci.nii.ac.jp/
And I think JSTOR has stuff in every language, also in Japanese
You’re right. I was just being lazy and figured people would know what I mean.
I have found their selection for other languages lacking, but that might be because I am just not as versed in those other languages I’ve tried using it for lol.
Thanks for both of those recommendations guys!
24 このたびは ぬさもとりあへず 手向山 紅葉の錦 神のまにまに (菅家)
菅家 is pronounced かんけ for this chap, whose (I guess proper/clan) name is Sugawara no Michizane. I found it very neat that he just went by the Onyomi reading of his clan name. It looks like this became more of a practice a little bit later, more into the second millennium. I’d never seen this practice before so I just found it neat.
As the book says, he was a pre-eminent scholar of Chinese classics and politician who, after the death of Emperor Uda (who, btw he was going on an excursion with when this poem was written), was exiled and died shortly thereafter.
The book mentions his role in the abolishment of envoys to Tang China, citing reasons of danger and unrest in Tang itself. A funny detail I found on Wikipedia was that before coming out against the position he was actually appointed the position, and there is a theory that because his spoken Chinese was horrible, he got rid of the role altogether to save face.
Honestly, I feel that. I’m way more versed in written Japanese than the spoken language. So if your struggling with one aspect of the language, take heart! So did this god of scholarship! His written Chinese was at least good enough for diplomatic and poetry exchanges.
He had a thing for ume trees, perhaps because of his immersion in the Chinese classics in which they are a tree much celebrated by poetry. Another of his most famous poems (its on Wikipedia with translation) is about a ume tree that he was going to dearly miss when he left Kyoto for exile. Legend has it that the tree in turn missed him so much that it up and flew to Dazaifu Tenmangu, the shrine built over his grave and dedicated to him, gaining the name 飛梅 (alternatively, his friend transplanted its seedlings).
The book mentions that Kanke is deified as a god of scholarship, known as Tenjin (天神). The way this came about is interesting. After his death there was a series of disasters: storms, fires, strange deaths. They were attributed to him, and so to placate his vengeful spirit he was first posthumously promoted back to a high position, and then, when this didn’t work, deified, with a shrine built for him. For the first few centuries of deification he was actually more often considered a kami of natural disasters, before his status as a god of scholarship eclipsed this, I guess as memory of the disasters directly related to him faded. And as Tenjin he still seems to be quite a popularly prayed to kanji by parents and students alike! Maybe if any of you live in Japan you’ve heard of him or come into contact with him already?
We’ve talked a lot about kakekotoba so I’m not going to dive into it much beyond saying たび can be read as 旅 or 度 and that the leaves of the trees are being likened to the nusa’s brocade, which I guess looks similar to leaves. Here is a picture of the thing he forgot which I found helpful:
What a funny irony it is for us to read a poem about offerings (or forgetting offerings, I guess) to the gods by a man who would later be worshiped as a god.
This is probably me speaking as a Christian, but I find the idea of offering the gods own back to the gods heightens the beauty of the scene he is painting with words so much more than anything else could do.
At first I thought his forgetting the nusa to be rather irresponsible, and his offering of the autumn leaves cheeky. Thus, I thought this and 22 were both exceptionally playful/light hearted poems, though having reread the poem several times now writing this I’ve come to appreciate more its concerns with a very deep beauty. Still, I think it is lighter than many of the other Hyakunin Isshu poems, so concerned with sorrow or romance. This might be one of my favourites so far. I’m really enjoying that now a quarter of the way through I’m feeling like I have a sense of the anthology’s character (we will of course see how will this sense is as I have the vast majority of the poems still to read).
https://100poets.wordpress.com/2012/11/21/an-offering-to-the-gods-poem-number-24/
https://adblankestijn.blogspot.com/2016/12/hyakunin-isshu-one-hundred-poets-one.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugawara_no_Michizane
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenjin_(kami)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ōnusa#/media/File:Shinto_Onusa.jpeg
Or if you’ve read Noragami, in which he’s a major recurring character. 
I did my PhD in Todai and 湯島天満宮 is basically across the street. So I went to pray there just before my defense and just after to say thanks. So yes 
7th week, reaching 30%. We have another 中納言 this week and I’m unreasonably happy to be able to read that word.
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30 有明の つれなく見えし 別れより 暁ばかり 憂きものはなし (壬生忠岑)
Mibu no Tadamine has a few claims of fame to his name. He was one of the thirty six Immortals of poetry, is obviously featured in the Hyakunin Isshu, his son (Tadami) is the author of yet another poem of the Hyakunin Isshu (Nr. 41) and he was one of the official compilers for the Kokinshuu, which happens to include 35 of his own poems… He has a total of 82 poems total in imperial anthologies.
The poem is about ariake, the late rising moon of the last half of the lunar cycle that is still visible in the morning. It can also be interpreted as either someone waiting all night for their lover, but never being welcomed in and as such having to return home at sunrise; or as someone leaving their lover behind in the morning after spending the night.
ariake seems to have been quite an important symbol for romance back in the day.
Also apparently, at the time, akatsuki didn’t refer to dawn, but the time just before, when the sky is still dark.
Interestingly in this poem, it is incredibly straight forward. No clever puns, no word games, no Kakekotoba, no nothing.
What he has done, is created a bit of a riddle, which plays into why it’s interpreted to be about a lover waiting, rather than only the moon.
The second line (つれなく見えし) is broken down like this (quote from https://onethousandsummers.blogspot.com/2019/11/hyakunin-isshu-poem-30-mibu-no-tadamine.html
because why would I try to rephrase that):
tsurenaku is the ren’yōkei 連用形 (conjunctive form) of adjective tsurenashi [note this is classical Japanese, not modern]. […] The adjective tsurenashi serves as an adverb, being connected to a verb miyu 見ゆ, which among its meanings has to appear. Together with shi し (this is actually a form of a particle ki き), miyu becomes mieshi, and means appears/appeared.
So tsurenashi means indifferent, cold-hearted and is very much associated with a human, a person. So then the question remains, what appears indifferent or cold-hearted?
A popular answer of reaers in the medieval times seems to be the one I mentioned above; a lover waiting in vain throughout the whole night. So what appears cold hearted here is the morning after having to wait all night, envoking a sense of sadness.
A second option would be for it to be a morning-after poem, the man having spent the night with his lover and leaving in the morning. Here, the woman would seem cold-hearted or indifferent upon the man leaving, like the moon at dawn.
https://100poets.wordpress.com/2013/01/02/long-goodbyes-poem-number-30/
https://onethousandsummers.blogspot.com/2019/11/hyakunin-isshu-poem-30-mibu-no-tadamine.html
https://www.jlit.net/premodernlit/hyakunin-isshu/poems_21-30.html
Not all that extensive this week, but hey 
Gasp! I just noticed that noone’s done ちはやぶる!
Unheard-of even since
The time of the passionate gods.
The Tatta River,
Its waters dyed
In vivid crimson.
在原業平 is his name, 朝臣 his title. He’s the son of 阿保親王 and 伊都内親王, the former of whom was a son of 平城天皇, while the latter was a daughter of 桓武天皇. Since Kanmu was also a son of Heizei, that makes Namihira both grandson and great-grandson of Heizei. Aren’t noble family trees fun? Anyway, he was not in the imperial line of succession, because his father had been banished before his birth for his involvement in Political Intrigues, so his family were made commoners, and given the name Ariwara.
For starters, ちはやぶる is a pillow word. A literal reading is something like “1000 swift swipes”, but from literary allusion, it has metaphorical reasons which range from “ferocious” to “impassionate” to “very old” to “Kamo Shrine”. Since it’s modifying 神 here, the “impassionate” meaning holds force.
The ～ず ending on 聞かず typically marks the ending of a poem - this poem uses inversion.
The 竜田川 is in modern-day Nara Prefecture. The waters of the river are dyed からかくれない, which is a shade of vivid crimson - you can see what that colour looks like here. As the book points out, in kanji it’s 唐紅, and the 唐 implies that the colour was imported from 唐の国 (= Tang Dynasty China). The poem never states what is dying the river, but this poem is typically read as being an autumn poem, making it momiji leaves or similar (and what else would it be, plus the Tatta River remains a popular autumn spot to this day).
One of the biggest tricks to this poem is in the last line - as Ye Olde Japanese didn’t have dakuten, the verb くくる could either be くくる - to tie-die - or くぐる - to go under. That is, the latter reading is that of the river flowing under a concealing blanket of fallen leaves. This leads to an alternate interpretation (one espoused by Kana in Chihayafuru), that this poem is a love poem, and the river flowing beneath the blanket of leaves represents hidden feelings of love for a woman. And indeed, Namihara is known as a bit of a romanticist, essentially a kind of Japanese Cassanova.
https://onethousandsummers.blogspot.com/2012/07/ogura-hyakunin-isshu-poem-17-ariwara-no.html
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/千早振る
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariwara_no_Narihira
And also the first Chihayafuru live-action movie
Nice! Now that you have done 1+ (future proofing this post), I feel like the whole thread has been validated.
Participation is at pretty much rock bottom, but I do enjoy reading those, so I see no reason to stop 
By the way, I have been copying the poems from this page, which has also so basic explanations about the poems. If anyone is trying to follow along without the book, that might be a good place to look at (full disclosure: I only looked at one or two, so I cannot judge the overall quality).
0 voters
I’d be down to keep going even if there was just one other person reading along. I’m late again this week >_< but I’m no longer working Wednesdays or Thursdays, which when we started were my main days for doing stuff like this, so that is good. I’ll be able to get caught up tomorrow evening.
I’m exactly the same. In fact, if there is only one or two other people, I almost feel obliged to keep going, helps me not be lazy xD
As for this week’s poem, I chose 35. Quite randomly actually, because I really enjoyed all of this week’s selections.
I really didn’t find as much information about the poem as I wanted to, the poet seems much more famous instead though. Didn’t wanna write an actual essay on the guy (because I totally could have, seems to have been quite the man back in the day), so I kept it short and sweet.
35 人はいさ 心もしらず ふるさとは 花ぞ昔の 香ににほひける (紀貫之)
Ki no Tsurayuki was a noble man at court and very famous in classical Japanese poetry. He headed the compilers of the Kokinshuu, is one of the Thirty-six Immortals of Poetry, and is rumoured to have written the anonymously published famous Tosa Diary, in which he writes from a woman’s perspective. It is written entirely in kana and speaks of a journey in 935, starting in Tosa Province and detailing the trip back to Kyoto.
His essay, which served as the preface for the Japanese version of the Kokinshuu, was the first ever critical essay on waka. It included waka history spanning from its mythological origins, all the way to, at that time, contemporary forms; waka groupings based on genres; references to certain poets; and sometimes criticism towards predecessors.
Ki no Tsurayuki is mentioned in the Tale of Genji as a waka master.
Ki no Tomonori, who composed poem 33, is his cousin.
This poem was featured in the Kokinshuu, with a headnote explaining how it came about. It is said that Ki no Tsurayuki visited a lodging house at Hase Temple, which had often visited when he was younger. There, he was told of for his long absence.
ふるさと in the poem, does not refer to ones place of birth here, but rather to a place one has previously lived, hence why it fits with it talking about a previously frequented temple.
The poem uses the nikugire technique after the second line, a full syntactic break.
This is techinically mentioned in the book, but I found it quite neat. So generally, when poets of the time would refer to blossoms, they would mean Sakura, but in this case it refers Ume. Apparently the fact that what it’s describing is the blossom’s scent, the reference switches from Sakura to Ume. Fascinating stuff.
28 山里は 冬ぞさびしさ まさりける 人目も草も かれぬと思へば
Apologies for being doubly late.
I’m really vibing with the ゆき poems in this collection, and look, this one is by the grandson of Emperor Koko, whose poem 15 I also did. Funny that.
I found two different blogs citing the same professor who said that this poem was written in answer to the question which season is lonelier, winter or fall? Muneyuki of course favoured fall, but he might have been responding to the more popular idea that it was fall. This is my own conjecture, but maybe poem 5 would be a good typical example of the treatment of fall to which Muneyuki is responding (however, Taifu’s date of birth and death being unknown, how direct this connection is could not be figured out).
Interestingly, in Teika’s time (I presume my source is referring to the HNI’s compiler), the 12th and 13th century, remote mountain villages had shifted from symbols of desolation to places for appreciating nature. I just think that makes this poem’s inclusion in the anthology a bit more interesting.
Man, I haven’t read poem 33 before, but I feel like I’ve always known it. It’s like the most stereotypical falling sakura scene ever, and I love it.
This week seems to have a lot of poems that are straight up descriptions of natural beauty, or maybe that’s just my perception because three in a row is a lot out of the way we’ve divided it. I quite appreciate the comment in the book about the consciousness of the HNI’s order, even if I’m just overreacting to 31-33.
While I don’t think it has a lot “hanging” on it the way we see others, I think in poem 34 松 is working as a bit of a kakekotoba. I recall reading (on Wikipedia but maybe corroborated by something from JSTOR?) that its homophonimity with 待つ means it almost always adds a sense of waiting around for something, perhaps here just invoking a bit of a mood. I wonder what he’s waiting for. Release or joining his friends who have passed, considering his supposed old age at the time of writing? : / This poem is heavy, but I like how well I can feel the weight in it (if I’m understanding it correctly ofc).
Okay so I’ve run into a bit of a problem.
For the next three weeks, aka all of September, I won’t have any days off. I’m working full time, plus have now got work on weekends too for at least that time span, so I won’t be able to do any research in that time 
I’m literally not even sure how I’ll get through the ‘conventional’ book clubs at this point. I’ll try to still read through the poems and explanations every week, but as I see it, there’s no way I’ll be able to do any research on anything until at least October 
I’m actually super sorry, because I know there’s only a few people doing research still and I wanted to keep going, but I honestly just don’t have the time at the moment.
Well, the good news is that next week is the break week. You can just follow along and read 10 poems over 3 weeks (or longer if you allow yourself to be a bit behind). 
It’s always possible to post research in the future too, it’s not like those un-researched poems are going anywhere 
