@Belthazar’s poem research club for the betterment of everyone’s education: reading マンガ✖くり返しでスイスイ覚えられる百人一首

Japanese Language Reading
#238

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)

Author

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.

Content

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.

Devices/Grammar/Interpretation

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.

Sources

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 :woman_shrugging:

2 Likes
#239

Gasp! I just noticed that noone’s done ちはやぶる!

17 ちはやぶる 神代も聞かず 竜田川 からくれなゐに 水くくるとは （在原業平朝臣）

Translation

Unheard-of even since
The time of the passionate gods.
The Tatta River,
Its waters dyed
In vivid crimson.

Author

在原業平 is his name, 朝臣 his title. He’s the son of 阿保あぼ親王しんのう and 伊都いろ内親王ないしんのう, the former of whom was a son of 平城へいぜい天皇てんのう, while the latter was a daughter of 桓武かんむ天皇てんのう. 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.

Content

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.

Sources

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

8 Likes
#240

Nice! Now that you have done 1+ (future proofing this post), I feel like the whole thread has been validated.

4 Likes
#241

Participation is at pretty much rock bottom, but I do enjoy reading those, so I see no reason to stop :stuck_out_tongue:
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).

  • 31 朝ぼらけ 有明の月と 見るまでに 吉野の里に 降れる白雪（坂上是則）
  • 32 山川に 風のかけたる しがらみは 流れもあへぬ 紅葉なりけり（春道列樹）
  • 33 ひさかたの 光のどけき 春の日に 静心なく 花の散るらむ（紀友則）
  • 34 誰をかも 知る人にせむ 高砂の 松も昔の 友ならなくに|（藤原興風）
  • 35 人はいさ 心も知らず ふるさとは 花ぞ昔の 香ににほひける（紀貫之）
  • Just reading the book/poems

0 voters

2 Likes
#242

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.

3 Likes
#243

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)

Author

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.

About the poem

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.

Trivia

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.

Sources

https://100poets.wordpress.com/2011/01/26/poem-number-35-ki-no-tsurayuki/

https://www.sacred-texts.com/shi/hvj/hvj036.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ki_no_Tsurayuki

https://www.jlit.net/premodernlit/hyakunin-isshu/poems_31-40.html

6 Likes
#244

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.

Sources

https://100poets.wordpress.com/2011/12/17/lonely-in-winter-poem-number-28/
https://adblankestijn.blogspot.com/2018/02/hyakunin-isshu-one-hundred-poets-one.html

4 Likes
#245

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.

2 Likes
#246

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).

3 Likes
#247

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 :sob:

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 :slightly_frowning_face:

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. :sob:

3 Likes
#248

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). :slight_smile:
It’s always possible to post research in the future too, it’s not like those un-researched poems are going anywhere :joy:

1 Like
#249

I know, but I still feel bad :joy: it’s already not very active here so I didn’t want to just up and disappear for so long… but hey, life right? :sob:

1 Like
#250

Speaking of the new week, here it is. Some weird names this time… Although not more than usual, I guess?

  • 36 夏の夜は まだ宵ながら 明けぬるを 雲のいづこに 月宿るらむ（清原深養父）
  • 37 白露に 風の吹きしく 秋の野は つらぬきとめぬ 玉ぞ散りける（文屋朝康）
  • 38 忘らるる 身をば思はず 誓ひてし 人の命の 惜しくもあるかな（右近）
  • 39 浅茅生の 小野の篠原 しのぶれど あまりてなどか 人の恋しき（参議等）
  • 40 しのぶれど 色に出でにけり わが恋は 物や思ふと 人の問ふまで（平兼盛）
  • Just reading the book/poems

0 voters

1 Like
#251

Aye, I was vaguely planning on doing 16 some point soon - someone volunteered to do it, but still hasn’t - but I haven’t found the time.

2 Likes
#252

34 誰をかも 知る人にせむ 高砂の 松も昔の 友ならなくに

Frank Watson’s commentary on HNI confirms my suspicions about 待つ and 松. While our book only mentions dead friends, Watson mentions that the Takasago Pines actually have an associated legend about two lovers who died and their spirits entered the pines that this poem talks about, so it could be about either friends or lovers. There is also a very famous Noh play about Takasago pines, but it involves two pine trees rather than one–still, a possible connection.

Not much information on the man himself. Besides being one of the 36, he was a mid-ranking court official. He was said to be talented in kangen, which is gagaku, Japanese classical music, without dance. I’m always fond of the musician poets.

4 Likes
#253

So here I am, level 22, wondering when on earth I’m going to use the kanji for “wisteria” (藤) and lo and behold I’m reading about Heian poetry and the Fujiwara (藤原) come up for every. single. poet.!

So for those of you with the book, when Yamato says 好きな人に好きって言えない気持ち、わかるなあ, is that a reference to his crush on Kana from way back at the beginning? That’s a cute detail. I was expecting to see more interaction between the 解説 cast, rather than just using it as an accessible excuse for the conversational style of describing the poem.

So I didn’t know what home boy was on about with the 平氏 and 源氏 when describing poem 40, so I did a little research and it looks like most of what he was describing is mostly relevant to the 11th centuryish, so hopefully I’m not the only one who didn’t know about this stuff yet. These two clans were two of four main ruling clans during the Heian period. They were, as Mr. Kageyama says, formerly members of the imperial family who became subjects when it grew too large. The other two of the four main clans gained their I suppose fancy clan name from the emperors, rather than coming out of the imperial family (though there was of course much intermarriage). We’ve talked about the Fujiwara clan, who starting with Fujiwara no Mototsune back with Emperor Koko (late 9th century, poem 15) made themselves defacto rulers with the position of kampaku. The fourth clan, the Tachibana clan, frequently fought the Fujiwara clan for power but by the mid-10th century, so before Kanemori, were eclipsed in power and scattered.

I hope that is news to some people and my reading comprehension/memory for the book’s 解説 isn’t a total travesty.

4 Likes
#254

I’m noticing that I’m especially liking poems written by members of the same family. From this batch, 文屋朝安’s poem is my favourite. I went and used 白露 in my own haiku…hehehe

So according to good ol’ 100poets.wordpress, who is in turn quoting prominent HNI scholar Mostow, this poem seems exceptionally common, I assume because pearls are a such a stock image in Heian poetry, and it is unknown today why it was historically so valued, which it was, appearing in a lot of anthologies. I really like the simpler poems describing beautiful scenes. Maybe it had a bigger place in the development of pearls as a popular Heian-era poetic image.

I bought Frank Watson’s translation of HNI b/c it was cheap but it wasn’t quite as annotated as I’d have hoped. I’m going to have to spring for Mostow’s book one of these days…when I’m not busy with grad school (lol like that day will come).

1 Like
#255

Also, 藤 is the second kanji for every single name that uses purely on’yomi out of the hundred most common surnames in Japan. 佐藤, 加藤, 伊藤, 斉藤, 近藤, and so on and so forth.

6 Likes
#256

Fascinating! I think hitherto my eyes have always completely glazed over whenever I realized I was looking at an unfamiliar name, so this is exciting to know now.

1 Like
#257

Those are extremely common names, so you should get more used to them in a flash :joy:
Other than names, there’s also 葛藤 which is common. Sadly 葛 isn’t on WK, but it’s also common-ish (but less than 藤).
I actually wondered how you would translate 葛藤 in English, but Jisho just gave up on giving any nuance :joy: