Oh no worries I know there is a lot 
before posting I even hesitated a little thinking “maybe it’s too much” but then I thought “yes but what about this poem and this other one” “uhmmm I don’t want to have 11 or 13 poems, I like a “good” number like 7 or 14 so let’s go for 14” “folding screens are cool I want to talk about them” “hey these passages of the Essays in Idleness are great” and brick by brick I ended up with this wall of text 
Thank you for taking the time to read me 
(mitrac I think you forgot to put your comment about the Spring post it’s alright though, happens to everyone)
I was thinking recently about the Moon, and her presence in Japanese poetry. Earlier in this thread I had translated a few Midaregami poems and mentioned very briefly a thesis that I had found online, written by Teppei Fukuda, about this anthology. Here is a direct quote from the abstract :
“In premodern Japan, poets had traditionally expressed their feelings through a set, limited range of classical landscapes and natural objects, which served as communal symbols Japanese poets shared across centuries. The seasons greatly occupied the attention of poets for more than a thousand years. The moon also is an important element in Japanese poetry with a set range of conventionalized poetic associations. However, by the turn of twentieth century, Yosano Akiko absorbed from the West the inspiration to express her personal feelings with her own invented moonlit landscapes, particularly ones set during spring and summer evenings. This thesis investigates what changes she made to the poetic conventions of the moon and the seasons in traditional thirty-one-syllable poetry.”
In the Chapter 1, “The Spring Moon in Tangled Hair”, we can find an interesting commentary about a super cute poem, one of the best in Midaregami in my opinion. Here is the original text with my translation, partly inspired by the one I’ve read in the thesis, with the commentary from Teppei Fukuda (what I quoted includes a brief part talking about another poem but I think it’s useful to understand what’s following). Usually I would also put my usual vocabulary/grammar notes but it happens that they are already in the commentary so, it would be a little redundant to do so.
みだれ髪 057 – 与謝野晶子
しのび足に君を
under the light pale moon
you don’t see me secretly
following you with your letters that I have
already read so heavy in
the right sleeve of my kimono
Commentary from the thesis
« […] Here is an example of a classical waka, composed by a female poet, Akazome Emon (956-1041), who lived one thousand years before Akiko.
やすらはで寝なましものをさ夜ふけてかたぶくまでの月を見しかな
(Akazome Emon, in Mostow 316)
Though I’d have preferred
to have gone off to bed
without hesitating,
the night deepened and
I watched the moon till it set!
(Mostow 316)
The female protagonist is perhaps, Akazome Emon herself. She is passively waiting for somebody under the moonlight. Regarding the romantic relationships in the Heian period, this woman’s action of waiting is something traditional in Japanese poetry, according to Sarah Strong: “a large number of women were placed in a position of waiting for their men, poems of tedium and longing were standard fare” (Strong 178). As the use of the moon in romantic longing poems in the Heian period shows, this passive action of waiting goes along with the melancholic thought, which is elicited by the moon. In other words, Heian women often waited under the moonlight for lover’s visits like in the poem above. In addition, there was a tradition that the moon should be considered to be the autumn moon unless a poem contains a word directly indicating a different season. Heian aristocratic women in waka poems were waiting for their lovers mostly under the autumn moon―a time of year when romance would fade.
The Modern Girl’s Pale Moon
Even though women in traditional waka poems usually take a position of waiting, Akiko’s female persona often act on their impulses: sometimes watching a man buying a present for his girl and thinking “that guy there is cute”; sometimes her poetic woman even chases a man she loves. For an example of the latter from Tangled Hair, Akiko’s female persona is not passively waiting for her man, instead she follows after him. In real life Akiko pursued Tekkan. The poem captures the excitement of young romance which though sometimes adventurous can be accompanied by immature hesitation. The moon here seems to inspire this young lover to go after what she wants, which would have been shocking to people living in the Meiji Period.
しのび足に君を追ひゆく薄月夜右のたもとの文がらおもき
(Yosano Akiko)
Following you
on foot stealthily
in this pale moon evening
So weighty, the letters already read
in my right sleeve.
One can see the complicated emotions of a young girl in love, such as hesitation and adventurous excitement. Together with poetic techniques such as hypermetric (ji-amari) lines Akiko’s diction amplifies this feeling, and this emotion is gently veiled and beautifully ornamented with the pale light of the moon.
Akiko’s diction often enriches the mood of the poem. In this poem, shinobi ashi (on foot stealthily) and fumigara (letters already read) are words that signal to the reader complicated and romantic feelings of the young girl in love. Shinobi ashi has a nuance that someone is following somebody sneakily, and the person following does not want the person followed to realize that he or she is following them. As he argues how Akiko’s statement of love was bold, Shinma tells the reader that even wife and husband hesitated to walk on the road together in the Meiji Period (Shinma 50). It was common for wives to walk a few steps behind men in traditional Japan. Shinobi ashi here tells us that Akiko’s girl persona desperately wants to be near the man she longs for. Fumigara means letters already read. Gara is used for something that has completed its mission, and about to be trashed and forgotten. However, here, Akiko’s poetic persona keeps fumigara in her right sleeve. Itsumi writes, “They were very important for the poet when she was young.” She adds: “The word ‘heavy’ indicates that these letters were mentally heavy for the poet” (Itsumi 66). Although readers might think that letters one can carry in one’s sleeve cannot be very heavy (omoki), Akiko’s female persona feels that the letters are heavy, not because of the physical weight, but for their psychological import. The poem’s final line gives us the sense that the letters are crucial for her in her pursuit of love.
Besides her unique choice of words, her intense emotional content is the key to interpreting all of Akiko’s poems. Her poems are usually so filled with emotion that they often exceed the limitation of beats of the tanka form (31 morae). Even though the first line of tanka usually is composed of 5 morae, the first line of this poem, shinobiashi ni has six morae. The complicated, romance-related hesitation, which is not strong enough to stop her from chasing the guy, is captured in this hypermetric line. According to Jon Holt, excessive (ji-amari) verses can be skillfully used by poets to either make the mood expansive or accentuate a passionate feeling. “These poems with excessive (ji-amari) verses have to break the bounds of thirty-one syllables because their lyric content is bursting at the seams” (Holt 343). He also mentions, “the excess beats can mimetically enhance the images of the poems, often in accentuating quantity expressions, making the mood more expansive, or accentuating a passionate feeling” (Holt 343-344). Akiko’s female persona here has a contradictory feeling of passion because on one hand she is hesitating to show her love, but on the other hand, she is tracking after him anyway. She is conflicted. One can see her complex emotions as she vacillates between hesitation and action. Akiko’s hypermetric line perfectly captures this deep complex emotion.
As mentioned earlier, Tangled Hair is a well-studied collection of tanka, and scholars widely differ on what to think of maidens that appear in the verses. Even in this poem, Itsumi Kumi contends that this poem captures the lively heart of a young girl. Sarah Strong, an American scholar, argues that Akiko’s poems changed the role of women in the waka tradition. Readers can easily imagine that sneakily chasing one’s love can create a certain type of excitement—for an immature girl or a mature woman. Along with the romantic excitement of following after a guy she loves, here, we can see an almost adventuresome feeling of hiding oneself while chasing somebody. Itsumi says, “It well captures the lively heart of a young girl. We can imagine a somehow thrilling and interesting scene.” (Itsumi 66). The girl is trying to keep her feelings inside of her as she is chasing her love. Perhaps the man realizes that she is following him, but the reader cannot really know what is going to happen. This situation gives some thrill to the verse. This thrill perhaps stimulates young girl’s passion and excitement. The girl in this poem is not just passively hiding her body and feelings from the lover, but actively chasing (oiyuku) him. In other words, she is hesitating to show that she loves him, but she physically and actively follows anyway. When one compares this with a female persona’s position of waiting in traditional waka poems mentioned by Sarah Strong, we can see that the female persona of this poem is modern.
The moon in Akiko’s poems sometimes enhances the poem with the combination of its unusual appearance and the rich emotions in the poem. The reader senses complex emotions of the protagonists and their relation to the image of the moon, here a thin, a hazy or a cherry moon as opposed to a generic moon. The pale moon night (usuzukiyo) illuminates the entire landscape of the poem and expands the romantic feeling. The moonlight emphasizes the exhilaration of the girl protagonist’s romantic feelings, as it helps her to hide from the man she is chasing. The pale moonlit night (usuzukiyo) gently illuminates the scene. The clouds or mists in the night sky blur the moonlight, and this misty pale moon gently veils Akiko’s female persona and her excitement of love. The usuzukiyo allows her to be more sneaky.
The pale moon night is somewhat ambiguous word as a seasonal word since some scholars consider it as a seasonal word of autumn, and others claim that it is a spring word. Because the moon itself is considered as a seasonal word for autumn in the waka tradition, some people argue that usuzukiyo is an autumn word. On the other hand, as mentioned above, usuzukiyo is associated with mists, which is the very thing that makes the moonlight pale. Since the misty moon (oborozukiyo) is used as a spring word from as early as The Tale of Genji (ca. 1000), some scholars categorize usuzukiyo as a seasonal word for spring. For instance, in The Names of the Moon (Tsuki no namae, 2012), a Japanese poet Takahashi Junko introduces usuzukiyo as a name of the spring moon along with other names for the moon associated with mists such as oborozuki, aburazuki, engetsu, and tangetsu (28). Considering the exhilarating mood of Akiko’s poem and the pale light helps her to secretly trail her love, it is not a mistake to take this moon as a misty spring moon. The role of the spring moon here, further amplifies the exhilarating feeling of a young girl’s romance. This use of the spring moon was something modern at the time in waka and tanka. »
– Fukuda, Teppei, “Moonlit Nights and Seasons of Romance: Yosano Akiko’s Use of the Moon in Tangled Hair” (2020). Dissertations and Theses. Paper 5580.
Personal notes about my translation
As you can see it is different from the ones I usually do ; I was inspired here by the translations of Laurel Rasplica Rodd who writes them with no punctuation marks and uses blank spaces to give a rhythm.
On the first line, I could have just written “under the pale moon” but I like the rhythm it gives to have a space between “light” and “pale”. It also does a play with the word “light” ; at first we think about the noun, the light, and then it turns out to be an adjective (but at the same time it’s still a noun, for the light emitted by the moon).
There is no indication of 夜 in my translation, because I couldn’t find a solution to make it fit in an interesting way, without too many syllables. It’s in these kind of moments that you realise how concise the Japanese language can be, with just three kanji to immediately describe a scene like that. But it doesn’t matter that much, since the moon is visible it’s clearly implied that it’s the night or evening (even though I admit that it can still be visible in other moments…).
The words “you don’t see me” are a personal touch. I could have just written “I’m secretly/discreetly following you” to follow more exactly the original text. Like it is said in the thesis we don’t know if the man actually knows that the woman is following him, but from the viewpoint of the writer it seems to me that the man doesn’t know. It’s the intention at least.
We also can’t be sure about how many letters the poetess is talking about when she writes 文がら. It could be just one, or five, seven, nine… おもき is describing a mental weight, not a material one. It’s interesting to think about the little nuance it can brings in the meaning : if it’s only one letter, it surely means that they haven’t been separated for too long ; but if we are talking about a number like seven, that probably means that it has been a very long time since they haven’t seen each other. So the plural noun can be interesting in that way, since we have to make a choice anyway ; we can’t translate in English this Japanese ambiguity. I have read so far three translations of this poem and only one wrote it singular.
And like you can see there are a lot of syllables in my translation, too much maybe but I think that the rhythm is still good, I like how it sounds at least. It’s the most important for me.
For the “usual” posts and especially the seasonal ones I like to post a lot of poems at the same time with a lot of cultural content, but I think it’s also nice sometimes to do smaller posts like this one 
Yes, I did forget to keep going! Here is how far I am, I’ll post as I go to keep the discussion going rather than wait for all comments. Then we can discuss as I read through it, or if there are no comments I’ll keep adding to this post
Comments (a start) on the spring edition
I had no idea about this, neat
buying 馬酔木 (雑誌)
I went down a little rabbit hole on this and found a couple options.
The first one is amazon but if you want to order more than once use a vpn, setting your location to Japan, otherwise in my experience the account gets closed after the first order (ie, you can make one order, then the next time you log on it cuts you off)
Amazon.co.jp
The second option I’ve used more often (no vpn and I prefer this over amazon). It’s Neokyo, a proxy where you can order items from different sellers, I found lots of copies from various markets on the Mercari and Rakuma by searching 馬酔木 (雑誌). They are probably used in this case but you can autotranslate the description and I order books that have the best photos and details for the price. All my experiences have been good, although one book smells strongly of mould. Just have a look first sometimes there is a promotion for one market or other, and if it’s your first order, which market has the best intro offer. I have a post somewhere with my experience, let me know if you’d like it
Neokyo
Great choice of music and video!
空蝉の世にも似たるか花ざくら咲くと見しまにかつ散りにけり
I like your translation choice with metamorphosis
I wonder, due to the にも and か, if the comparison is potentially even a surprise question / realisation - is our world even that transient (as the Sakura)?!
Literally: “Is it similar even to our world”
?
春ごとに花のさかりはありなめどあひ見む事はいのちなりけり
You’re right it does make a shock. To the extent that I wondered what such a poet would write in our time, when perhaps it’s not such a certainty that even the Sakura will boom
I had no idea about that proxy seller 
thanks for that it seems like a good option, I think I also prefer doing this rather than taking the Amazon . jp route with the VPN. I’m not planning to buy them right now anyway, but it’s still useful to know a way to get them if I want to one day. I will try to remember at this moment to ask you for the post you wrote about your experience with it
Glad you liked it ! what an amazing game it is, an artistic masterpiece, even though the open world gets quite repetitive
Thank you, it’s these kind of situations that make translation an interesting hobby sometimes I think it’s precisely because how different Japanese and English are, it’s not as fun when languages are very close to each other.
For the にも, I am honestly not totally sure. But I am pretty confident in it. In these kind of situations I procede sometimes by elimination, I look at the lists of functions for each particle and I try to think about which one makes the most sense ? For me the に is to mark what comes before for a comparison, and the も seems to be here just for emphasis.
But I am on the other hand 100% sure about the か : it’s a meaning of exclamation, not interrogation. The poem is precisely used as an example in Shirane’s Grammar for the exclamation meaning of か and かな. And I’ve also read several other translations where it always was a meaning of exclamation rather than interrogation.
One way to be sure is to also look at the end, 散りにけり. Here is what Helen McCullough says in her Bungo Manual about one of the functions of the suffix けり :
“[…] It may indicate a feeling of surprise or wonder evoked by the speaker’s sudden awareness of a continuing condition or situation which he had not noticed before. […] English : exclamation point (often untranslatable). This is the usual meaning when keri occurs in Heian poetry.”
And this precise poem is cited as an example.
You mean that there could be a point where there are such huges environmental damages/changes that even the sakura wouldn’t bloom ? Maybe indeed, sometimes I also think about the potential of a cataclysmic disaster like a worldwide nuclear war, or an asteroid wiping out the Earth… and even if these things don’t happen, there will still be a point in billions years from now where this planet will be engulfed by the Sun anyway 
Continuing my comments on the spring edition
Summary
This is my favourite one. I feel like this poem expresses my experience of spring blossoms perfectly
Thanks for that, I have wondered if the ‘reading’ was actually い.
I enjoy 一茶 and the ones you chose here
Incredible 
I wonder if you could find a tutor on italki who has an interest in classical japanese, poetry, haiku, etc, and if that person would be an interesting resource to reach out to a few times a year
Probably an hour on italki costs less than some of your books, and I bet someone Japanese with a shared interest could be a very useful resource…
I’ll continue with your next aside on the 白拍子［しらびょうし], I don’t want to rush this. Thanks for all the effort you put in!
You’re welcome, thank you for taking the time 
Interesting coincidence that you’re saying this because I was precisely thinking these last weeks about taking some italki courses. I had my first conversation in Japanese at one of the stands of the Japan-Day (which was… underwhelming by the way, you didn’t miss anything incredible) and it was a really fun moment, I mean it was a veeery short conversation but the woman that I was talking to seemed so surprised and happy that I was trying to speak in her language (it was really noisy around us so I don’t remember if I got 上手ed but she said something close I think 
). I didn’t know how great of a feeling it can be, up to this point Japanese was a language that I had only read and listened to, so… But now I really want to practice speaking, especially since I want to visit Japan one day, and like you said these lessons can also be useful for talking about waka/haiku and all the intricacies of classical Japanese. I actually looked it up but from what I saw on italki a lot of teachers didn’t include “Japanese Literature” on the subjects they want to teach/talk about, I’ve managed to find one on another website, Preply, never heard of it before but it seems like a reliable platform. The teacher has excellent reviews and a master’s degree in Japanese literature so, right now I can’t but at some point in the near future I will take lessons with her, the price is also reasonable. It will be so great to be able to discuss about some of my favorite passages/poems, and to be able to ask questions instead of having a headache for hours…
Thank you for making me feel better about it, I was just thinking the other day about it!
I’m glad you went, though! I hope it was worth it. It sounds like your conversation was inspiring, that’s great 
I have heard of Preply, that’s legit. An MS in Japanese literature - sounds like someone who might be up your alley! Will be looking forward to how that goes
I was curious to see what it looks like so I’m glad that I have done it at least once (and that little discussion in Japanese at the calligraphy stand was cool) but I will probably not go back in the future, it felt quite disappointing to me, very… “cheap” unfortunately. It was also full of people, the Rheinpromenade but also the ImmermannstraBe were absolutely packed, on one hand it’s nice but on the other hand it feels like too much sometimes, you had to stand in line for everything and it felt really cramped in these narrow paths. I didn’t even try a restaurant in the Little Tokyo district because it was just too much, I’ve read really good reviews on these though. There are also a lot of beautiful things coming directly from Japan if I’m not mistaken in the Kyoto store, and the Takagi bookstore is cool too.
There were also a few beautiful cosplays and the concert and the fireworks were not too bad though, so there is that. And when you walk all along the Rheinpromenade there is a park at some point with a Japanese garden, nothing incredible but it was pretty. One thing that I also liked was the fact that there was a kind of “hidden” path leading to a really cramped but intimate space where you are surrounded by trees and foliages, I felt like a Heian aristocrat doing a secret meeting in his lover’s garden with all the snow in winter I wonder how the garden would look like.
But again nothing that really gave me that “Wow!” factor. And it might sound absurd to say that but the fact that there were a few carps in such a small pond gave me some kind of weird feeling, it almost feels a little-bit anxiety inducing in a sense, to think about these fishes spending all their lives rotating and rotating again in the same little space… but as humans we just can’t imagine what it feels like to be them, they are maybe happy like that 
But I was thinking at some point maybe I would feel more at ease and able to just lose myself in my thoughts if it was a garden without those carps, as stupid as it may seem I don’t know, maybe I will change my mind about that later, feelings are weird sometimes especially when these fishes are maybe just perfectly cool with their situation, chilling and vibing together lol
(damn, I wrote a whole novel again…)
Thanks for the impressions! Sounds like something I’ll try in the off season someday. I know what you mean about having conflicting feelings for the koi. I wonder if it’s bigger than the koi pond in hannover’s Japanese garden. It seemed quite large to me for such a pond. I’ve only been once but I’d like to go back. Nice idea to go during different seasons
往事茫々
Summer is a season with a quite unique aesthetic in the imperial waka anthologies. It’s a world of nostalgia, of nights always too short and of melancholic thoughts lost in the rain, or samidare, with one bird in particular that is almost always present : the hototogisu, or Cuculus poliocephalus, most commonly called lesser cuckoo or small cuckoo. Among the thirty-four summer poems of the Kokinshû, twenty-eight indeed feature the small cuckoo. The bird announces the beginning of the season and is associated, like the deer is to the bush clover, to a specific plant named the mandarin orange, or (hana)tachibana. In the book Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons, Haruo Shirane writes that the tachibana was already present in the Man’yôshû, but that it is « in the Heian period and in the Kokinshû » that « the scent of the flower […] became associated with memory » especially because of one specific poem, the KKS 139, that I have translated here.
« As a result of this famous poem, the mandarin-orange flower, somewhat like the small cuckoo, became closely associated with personal memory and nostalgia. »
We can also see that a lot of the negative sides of summer were not written about. Summer, « in early and medieval Kyoto », was a season characterized, in the real world, by illness, death, humidity and heat, so much so that a lot of festivals were held to pray to the gods and to ask them for defense against disease, contagion, and other disasters that could potentially be mortal. Haruo Shirane writes :
« These negative aspects of summer were not considered the proper subject matter for classical poetry and generally do not appear in waka, particularly those of the imperial waka anthologies, which were intended to manifest the harmony of the state and the cosmos. Court poetry of the Heian period thus did not reflect the actual climate so much as create a highly aestheticized and, as we shall see, ideological representation of the four seasons. Imperial waka anthologies, such as the Kokinshû, selected the most appealing aspects of the seasons as they conformed to aristocratic standards and for which there was often a Chinese literary precedent. The heavy weight placed on spring and autumn (two books each) and the brief representation of summer and winter (one short book each) in the Kokinshû thus reflect a utopian view of nature. »
In the world of waka, each season indeed is contemplated via a partial lens, with deliberate artistic choices to only write about certain flowers, plants, animals, meteorological phenomenons and celestial bodies who were attributed and codified to each one of them (the deer and the moon for autumn, for example). Waka never talk, in the imperial anthologies, about mundane and inelegant themes like the heat for example, they always feel serious, elegant and more or less melancholic. There is a striking difference with the world of haiku, which is describing a much more complete and realistic view of the season. In the Summer anthology of R. H. Blyth, you only have to take a look at the seasonal index at the beginning of the volume to understand how much broader the poetical subjects are : snails, tiger-moths, spiders, toads, ants, bats, melons…
I think that when you read waka and haiku one after another, it’s easier to see the difference between them. Personally I like both. I love the codified, formal, elegant, serious and melancholic world of waka, just as much as I love the larger freedom of tone and theme in haiku.
When I first anticipated the writing of this post, I was thinking that it might be less interesting for me to do a selection of summer poems because at first glance I wasn’t particularily inspired by it. But the more I was looking at all the poems through my various sources and translating them, the more I came to appreciate it. It was really difficult to choose the music though, I hesitated so long with this one. But I finally resonated the most with the more sad, melancholic sound, so I selected this one. If you wish, you can open it in another tab and click on the two arrows under the name of the track, on the right, to put it on repeat.
古今集 0139 – 詠み人知らず
When I breathe the flowers
of the mandarin orange waiting
for the Fifth Month,
I remember the scent on the sleeves
from that person I loved long ago
かげば : izenkei of the yodan verb kagu meaning “to smell” + the conjunctive particle ba expressing the idea of “when…”.
ぞ : emphatic particle. According to the kakari-musubi rule, if it’s used in the middle of a sentence, the final verb is ending with the rentaikei. See the following word :
する : rentaikei of the irregular sahen verb su. It seems to me that it works here as an intransitive verb, so this extract from Shirane’s Grammar applies here : « As an intransitive verb, su means that a certain situation “exists” or “occurs” ».
When we read the poem it seems that we can’t be sure about the nature of the person who is reminded by the author. A friend, a lover ? It seems that it was a lover, from what I have found on this website :
『三省堂 全訳読解古語辞典』で「袖」を引くと、「橘の花の香りから昔の恋人の袖の香を思いおこすという叙情性豊かな歌であるが、「恋の部」ではなく、「夏の部」に収められている。選者の意識には「花橘」に重点が置かれていたのであろう。」と書かれています。
I really like this poem. We all have some memories associated to some scents ; either a person, or a place, or a time. Sometimes, this scent only lasts for a very small time, and then it disappears and you never breathe it again.
新古今集 0238 – 皇太后宮大夫俊成 (藤原俊成)
Will there be someone ?
to remember me while scenting
the mandarin orange,
when my own life too has
become a ghost of the past
皇太后宮大夫俊成 (藤原俊成) : I will just copy-paste what I had already written for the SKKS 664 in the Winter post :
I honestly know nothing at this point about all the different titles of the court ; it seems quite complicated from what I’ve seen, same thing for all the different clans and families and branches of these families. But here there are 2 parts :
皇太后宮大夫 [俊成] : こうたいごうぐうのだいぶ［しゅんぜい］; in L. R. Rodd’s book, the title part was translated as “Master of the Palace Quarters of the Empress Dowager”. I looked it up and from what I’ve seen,
– 皇太后［こうたいごう］is “Empress Dowager” ;
– one of the meanings of 宮［ぐう］is “palace/imperial residence” ;
– and finally 大夫［だいぶ］means something like “grand master”.
The part in brackets is part of the poet’s real name :
藤原俊成 : ふじわらのしゅんぜい
か : I think that it’s just the usual interrogative particle ka.
また : in this context, this adverb feels a little tricky to me. But when I look at all the possible meanings in Shirane’s Reader, the one that makes the most sense to me is “in the same way, same fashion”. “In the same way that a person remembers other people while scenting the mandarin orange (like in the KKS 139 which is the source of inspiration of this poem by the way), will someone remembers me in the same way ?”.
思ひ出でむ : mizenkei of 思ひ出づ［おもひいづ］(to remember) + rentaikei of the auxiliary む expressing speculation about the future.
Even though it is written like that, I’ve read that there is a sound change with mu ; in the translation of Laurel Rodd, the word is romanized like this : “omohiiden”.
も : also, too.
なりなば : ren’yôkei of the yodan verb naru (to become) + mizenkei of the auxiliary nu indicating here, I think, the idea of certainty that an action (here, the death of the poet) will be realized + conjunctive particle ba following here the mizenkei which means that it has an hypothetical meaning.
As you can see, the honka of this poem is the KKS 139. Three hundred years are separating the two anthologies ; it really shows you how important and prestigious the Kokin wakashû was (and still is today).
Will there be someone to remember us after our death ? I often think about the cases that I’ve read about some people who were living such an isolated life that their dead body was only discovered extremely late, often because of the smell, or the letters and the bills accumulating in the mail box. Some people live and die surrounded by love and attention, and they are fondly remembered ; while some other ones are already forgotten while they are alive, and die with no one caring. Such is life in this world ; unfair, aleatory, and indifferent.
古今集 0146 – 詠み人知らず
郭公鳴くこゑ聞けば
Oh, cuckoo –
when I hear you singing I can’t
escape this wistfulness,
even for my ancient home and
the ones who grew away from me
こゑ : こえ or 声 ; simply the voice, the singing of the bird. In my opinion it’s a shame that the hiragana ゑ and ゐ are not used anymore, because I find them to be really pretty.
聞けば : izenkei of kiku (to listen) + conjunctive particle ba, expressing the time, “when…”.
別れにし : I think that it is the ren’yôkei of wakaru (to part, to be separated) + the ren’yôkei of the auxiliary nu indicating the completion of the action + the rentaikei of the auxiliary ki indicating personal past.
さへ : even. I’ve read that the poet is writing this because there is nostalgia even about the place itself, not only the people and memories here.
恋しかりける : ren’yôkei of the shikari stem of the shiku-adjective 恋し［こひし］(yearned for, missed, beloved) + rentaikei of the auxiliary verb keri which is expressing here, I think, the usual meaning of exclamation when the author suddenly realises something.
The very first word of the poem forces the translator to make a choice. I don’t know if it would be good to just literally translate “cuckoo” without any other word, even if it could still be possible I guess, especially if you put a comma just after.
Cuckoo,
Ah, cuckoo
Ah, cuckoo !
Oh, cuckoo !
Oh cuckoo
In the end I’m happy with the choice I’ve made. “the ones who grew away from me” is also not explicitly told in the original text.
古今集 0153 – 紀友則
Composed at the Poetry Contest of the Empress, during the reign of the Kanpyô era
In the summer rain,
lost in my anxious thoughts I hear
a cuckoo singing
in the depths of the night ;
where is he going, I wonder ?
紀友則 : きのとものり
詞書
寛平［かんぴょう］: Kanpyô era.
御時［おおんとき］: reign.
后の宮［きさいのみや］: empress.
歌合せ［うたあわせ］: poetry contest.
和歌
物思ひ［ものおもひ］: anxious, sad thoughts ; troubled mind.
をれば : I think that it is the izenkei of the rahen verb oru which can have the meaning of “to sit” or “to exist” + conjunctive particle ba indicating the time, “when…”.
いづち : I think that it is the adverb here, meaning “in which direction”.
行くらむ［ゆくらむ］: shûshikei of yuku (to go) + the shûshikei of the auxiliary ramu expressing supposition, conjecture. I’m not totally sure if the sound change also applies here, if it is ran instead of ramu.
古今集 0159 – 詠み人知らず
Is it you, cuckoo ?
the one who sang so much, last year
during summer –
or are you another one ? your voice
sounds exactly the same
去年［こぞ］: last year.
鳴きふるしてし : it comes from 鳴き旧るす［なきふるす］meaning, from what I see here, to sing many times to the point where it doesn’t feel new, “fresh” anymore ; in other words, to be always singing, during all the summer of last year in the context of this poem. It’s the ren’yôkei of this verb + I think it is the conjunctive particle te and the rentaikei of the auxiliary ki for personal past.
あらぬ : mizenkei of the verb ari (to be) + rentaikei of the negative auxiliary verb zu. sore ka aranu ka ? Is it ? Is it not ?
変はらぬ［かはらぬ］: mizenkei of kawaru (to change) + rentaikei of the negative auxiliary zu.
古今集 0163 – 壬生忠岑
早く
When he heard the song of a cuckoo, at a place where he was living long ago
むかしべや今も恋しき郭公故郷にしも鳴きて来つらむ
Are you longing for
the time gone by, cuckoo ?
is it why you came
in this hometown of ours
to sing… and cry
壬生忠岑 : みぶのただみね
詞書
早く［はやく］: ren’yôkei of hayashi meaning “a long time ago”.
ける : in both cases here, for me it is the rentaikei of the auxiliary verb keri expressing here “hearsay past”.
よめる : izenkei of yomu［詠む］meaning “to compose a poem” + I am not totally sure but it seems to me that it is the rentaikei of the auxiliary verb ri indicating the completion of the action. I have read in Shirane’s Grammar that this ri is following the izenkei of yodan verbs, so… knowing this also gives weight to this option.
和歌
むかしべ : from what I see here, it would be written like that with the kanji : 昔方 and it would have the same meaning than mukashi alone.
や : I think that it is the interrogative ya.
も : in this context it seems to me that it means “too”. “Now, too…”.
に : I’m not totally sure but I think that it’s just a location particle.
しも : adverbial particle putting emphasis on one particular thing.
来つらむ : ren’yôkei of the kahen verb ku (to come) + shûshikei of the auxiliary tsu indicating the completion of the action + shûshikei of the auxiliary ramu expressing supposition, conjecture. For the sound change, once again I’m not totally sure if it’s pronounced kitsuran or kitsuramu, even though kitsuran seems plausible.
園女
carrying on my back
my child, messing up my hair –
ah ! the summer heat
園女 : そのじょ
負た子［おうたこ］: the child that the poetess is carrying on her back.
に : I think that it indicates here the agent of the action (the child).
なぶらるゝ : I know the meaning, but I’m not 100% sure of the grammar. I think that it is the mizenkei of the yodan verb naburu + the rentaikei of the auxiliary verb ruru indicating a passive function. The general meaning is “to play with something” with the hands, to fiddle with.
哉 : it’s just the kanji version of the usual kana.
蕪村
with my paper-lantern,
I pass through the hallway –
summer rain
蕪村 : ぶそん
紙燭［ししょく］: paper lantern.
廊下［ろうか］: the hallway, corridor. I like to imagine it as an outside path with the roof protecting it from the rain.
や : it’s just a function of kireji here.
其角
cold refreshing air –
so visible above the Musashi plain,
the shooting stars
其角 : きかく
先づ［まず］: “first of all” ; the meaning here is to put emphasis on the shooting star, to put it above the rest.
I never saw any shooting star in my life, or any comet. I can’t stop thinking about moving somewhere else, a place where living in civilisation doesn’t force me to sacrifice entirely the enjoyment of nature. One day, maybe…
其角
outside in the heavy
summer rain, the woman is alone –
staring into space
夕立［ゆうだち］: summer rain.
I also really like this haiku. What is the woman thinking, alone in the rain ? It’s a very cinematographic scene in my opinion.
子規
涼しさや
cool chilling air –
the light of the lanterns vanishes,
sound of the water
子規 : しき
行燈［あんどん］: R. H. Blyth translates this as “night-light”. I looked it up and it seems to me that it is a kind of lantern surrounded by paper, I have already seen it several times, it seems relatively frequent.
季吟
‘This summer I became
too thin, that’s why’ she answers, just
before crying
季吟 : きぎん
夏痩［なつやせ］: a noun designating the loss of weight in summer.
と : quotative particle.
I wouldn’t have understood this haiku if it wasn’t for R. H. Blyth’s commentary. It’s a very unique and very implicit poem. The girl who is talking here is answering to her friend, who asked her why she looks so pale and in bad shape. She says natsuyase to give a reason, but she can’t stop her tears who reveal her inner feelings, the inner truth : she’s in love.
蕪村
summer change of clothes –
this world of suffering, I look like
I have forgotten it
更衣［ころもがえ］: one of the major summer themes in haiku. It designates the change of clothes, for the seasonal change.
I really like the depth of meaning of this poem. As human beings, we live and suffer in a lot of different ways ; but in our daily life, something as simple as a change of clothes can make us happy and make us forget all of our worries and sufferings. A good hot shower and a copious hot meal after a difficult day, before sleeping in new fresh sheets ; the smell of a perfume ; buying fresh flowers ; wearing new clothes ; all these things can seem very little, but they are, in fact, full of meaning.
夾山
水ふんで草で足ふく夏野かな
treading on water
and then on grass, to dry my feet –
ah, the summer plains !
夾山 : らいざん
ふんで : it seems to me that this is the modern て–form of fumu［踏む］meaning “to step on”.
ふく : with the kanji it must surely be 拭く meaning “to wipe”, “to dry”.
一茶
生きてゐるばかりぞ
doing nothing else
than living – she and I, me and
the poppy flower
一茶 : いっさ
生きてゐる［いきている］: living.
ばかり : an adverbial particle indicating restriction, “only”, “just”.
ぞ : emphasis particle.
芥子の花［けしのはな］: poppy flower. In the translation I put it in the singular but, perhaps Issa is talking about several flowers. With the plural it would be “they and me, me and the poppy flowers” and I just don’t like how it sounds, also the repetition of “me”. And even if they were several flowers, he could still be talking only about one. I prefer the idea of adressing directly, personally, one poppy flower.
The poppy flower doesn’t care about the meaning of life, she simply is.
蕪村
to go across
this summer river, my sandals in hand –
how pleasant it is !
草履［ぞうり］: traditional Japanese sandals.
Like in the summer plains haiku just before, there is in this haiku, in my opinion, a very pure and child-like feeling, this pleasure of being in direct contact with the water, the dirt, the woods, the adventure. Here is what R. H. Blyth wrote about it :
"When we do this kind of thing, we feel what Wordsworth calls “the primal sympathies”, our common nature with water and stones and sand. And the touch of cold water on the feet has something in it that defies all explanation, and even expression. […] Like the voices of birds and the songs of insects, the touch of cold water
feeds the mind with pure joy, and is free from all sadness. "
子規
手の
in my hand, it feels
cold – the luminescence
of the firefly
光り［ひかり］: literally, the light ; the word “luminescence” is just a translation choice for having more syllables (and it’s also the exact scientific word without being far away from the original Japanese one).
千代
川ばかり闇は流れて螢かな
the darkness of the night
flowing in the river, nowhere
else – fireflies
千代 : ちよ
ばかり : an adverbial particle expressing here an idea of restriction, “only”.
- Dango Kid - summer rain – Vy-Kim Nguyen
- 去年的练习 – Pan Yongjun
- I found this GIF here ; it comes from the first episode of the 平家物語 anime adaptation.
Several weeks ago, I was reading an extract of the famous Makura no sôshi［枕草子］that really shows the importance granted by the Heian aristocrats to the hototogisu. I thought that it would be interesting to share it here.
« It had been overcast and tending to rain since the first day of the month. Some of us were sitting about at a loose end, when I came up with the suggestion that it would be fun to go off on an expedition to hear the hototogisu. The others immediately leapt at the idea, so the outing was organized.
[…] as for the hototogisu, they were indeed calling back and forth, so loudly in fact that they made almost too much of a din for comfort. We did feel sorry then that Her Majesty wasn’t there to hear them, nor the others who’d so wanted to come with us.
Our host declared that since we were in the country we must see some country things. He produced a bundle of something called ‘rice heads’, and called in some girls from nearby houses, lowly folk but quite neat and presentable […] We laughed with pleasure at how new and strange everything was, and all these distractions quite dispelled any thought of composing our hototogisu poems. […]
When we arrived back, Her Majesty asked what we’d seen. […]
‘Well then, what of your poems?’ Her Majesty inquired, and when we confessed our story, she said, ‘This is a great shame. How will it be when the senior courtiers ask to hear what you composed, and you have nothing at all of interest to show them? If only you’d made your poems then and there, when you heard the hototogisu. You were obviously too constrained by wanting to create something pedantically correct. Well, you must compose them now. I quite despair of you all!’
This was all perfectly true, and we felt miserable. We were busy discussing what our poems should be, when a poem on the theme of his token spray of deutzia blossom arrived from Adviser Kiminobu, written on this paper coloured in the deutzia combination – I can’t now recall the poem. This required an immediate reply, so we sent someone to fetch an inkstone from our rooms. »
– translation by Meredith McKinney.
It’s amusing because it really shows how much of a microcosm the Heian aristocratic culture was, and how luxurious and disconnected it was in regards to the general population of that time, the “lowly folk”… 
It’s also of course a proof of how important the small cuckoo was in this world, so much so that they decide, one day when they wake up, to organize an expedition only to hear its voice (well, during the trip they were distracted by a lot of things, but it was still the first motive for this little expedition).
The bird was also, of course, a source of inspiration for a lot of ukiyo-e. We can see on this one a young woman pricking up her ears to listen to its song. On this other one, Izumi Shikibu is inspired by a painting and composes a poem ; according to the description, “the legend said, the cuckoo sang responding to her poem”.
Screen paintings were also a source of inspiration. In the book Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons, Haruo Shirane writes :
« In the Heian period, aristocrats not only “wore” the seasons, but were surrounded by waka-based seasonal references inside their palace-style (shinden-zukuri) residences. […] a poet would compose a waka on a scene depicted in a screen painting […] Since Heian aristocratic women rarely went out, screen and partition paintings, decorated with small sheets of waka, became, along with the garden, a surrogate for nature. The women often composed poems not on the actual small cuckoo that they heard in the garden, but on the hototogisu painted on a screen painting or partition. »
I am happy to say that, with this post, I have officially completed, on this thread, the full cycle of the four seasons 
I have now at least one post for each one. This almost feels like I have reunited all the Exodia cards, should I buy myself a cake or, a Four Seasons pizza or something ? 
I know I know, it might sounds silly to want to celebrate that, but it truly feels like the culmination of something to me… it was a lot of work and I think that I have done them really well, even though they could always be better. I’ve come a really long way since I’ve started this thread in November 2023.
I have also crossed the milestone of the 100 translations if I count the ones on my computer that I didn’t post here ; one day maybe.
A part of me also wishes that I had thought about the haiku books earlier, I would have been able to include more poems and a more complete depiction of autumn and winter. I also have a yojijukugo title for spring and summer, but not for autumn and winter, and in the autumn post the notes are not directly below the poems like in the subsequent posts. But nothing on this thread has to be definitive though, I can always edit them later and add the poems of each new post in it. These poems would appear 2 times in the thread, but at least I could put a link in the first post towards each seasonal post ?
I don’t know, I’m still not sure about that. What’s the future of this thread ? Writing all the notes takes me quite a significant amount of time, but if I only share one or a few poems at a time then it becomes of course much easier and faster. Now that I have these four seasonal posts, I feel like I have already “completed” this thread, and that everything else will come as a bonus.
Congrats on finding your way through four seasons 
absolutely something to celebrate!!!
A four seasons pizza is such a fun idea
It’s definitely a lot of work and a unique project to have undertaken.
Yeah I would see it like this, using the principle of kaizen to spend time refining and going deeper into fewer things. Whereas up to now was a huge effort to create a benchmark, now that it’s there, you can improve on your knowledge in smaller steps - eg link back to old posts so you don’t have to write as much explanatory text, or improve on extracts of discussions as your understanding deepens
I have always wondered this. One of the biggest surprises to me about Japan was the regularity of natural disasters and the huge discomfort from the weather the majority of the time (and the summer strikes me as deadly!). Precisely because the exported cultural aesthetic shows such tranquility and refinement, I see now how that impression gets transmitted. Interesting discussion there!
This is such a fun comment, given haiku in itself is relatively speaking so highly codified. You are well and truly immersed to feel that freedom in haiku!
Thank you I know that my posts are really long and that you are very busy so, I always appreciate that you take the time to read me. It always gave me a huge boost of motivation throughout the making of this thread because I knew that even if no one else was doing it you would still be here reading and commenting.
I never thought about this but you’re right, it really falls on this kaizen mindset !
Now that I have crossed this milestone it also gives me more confidence for what’s ahead. I think that with classical Japanese one of the biggest hurdles is that sometimes we put on ourselves a mental barrier before even diving deep in the study of it. It has a kind of “aura” of exceptional difficulty compared to modern Japanese. And it is hard and different, I don’t want to make it seem like I underestimate the difficulty of it. But with the right books and enough patience it’s perfectly possible to learn it. I don’t like the fact that online (on other websites, not here on WK) there are always so many people who make it seem like it’s SO different and so difficult compared to modern Japanese, like Latin is to French (a really bad comparison in my opinion) because it just puts a supplementary mental hurdle on the person who is not feeling confident.
When you read, for example, this sentence from the Genji monogatari :
木の葉の散りかふ音、水の響きなど、あはれも過ぎて、もの恐ろしく心細き所のさまなり。
In comparison to modern Japanese, it is in my opinion like a snake who has sloughed his skin ; different, of course, but certainly not a bear or a cuckoo. That’s my next long-term challenge, to be able to read the Genji and the other classics ; first because I want to, but it also gives me a boost of motivation to prove wrong the people who say that it’s too hard and impossible. 塵も積もれば山となる 
Yes, I also find it to be interesting. Haruo Shirane really goes in details in his book about this, he’s a great scholar.
Where I live I never had to face natural disasters like tsunami or earthquakes so, it’s hard to imagine what it’s like to be in a place like that.
I was actually thinking about this the other day when I was re-reading what I wrote. Haiku is already in itself a codified form, so the fact that waka is even more codified says a lot about it. You would never see a waka like the one with the sandals in hand while he’s crossing the river, or the one with the child on the back of his mother in the summer heat, playing with her hair.
By the way, before I forget, the full translation of the Shinkokinshû is now in open access on the Brill publishing house’s website, if you are interested. I don’t know if it will always stay like that so, it’s a golden opportunity to download it now and save 275,60 euros, minus the shipping fee (!!!..it’s actually insane, and even disrespectful to the reader, how expensive it is. I mean, I get it, it’s almost 2000 poems and it’s a monumental amount of work to translate them all and to write the appendices etc., but still… the French translation of the Kokin wakashû is 27,50 euros, and it’s 1111 poems. So… yeah, they were just being extremely greedy, and it’s a shame in my opinion because it seems obvious to me that more people would potentially buy it if the price was lower. This open-access decision is very contrarian to their initial greediness though ; I don’t know, maybe the kami of poetry talked to them in their dreams, and they had an epiphany or something 
).
Such an interesting point, I definitely had that impression you described as well. It’s another nice feature of this thread, there are potentially more people than you realise who might browse in the future and benefit from the collection of resources and your dive into each season
Nice!! I have that as a longer term goal. Are you diving straight in or will you read a simplified or a translated version alongside? There’s a series of classic arranged a children’s books that I’m considering reading first, and my friend recommended a specific manga version of Genji. might feel a bit sacrilegious though
This is my favorite part of the summer series you posted - making this contrast clear. I really enjoyed having that experience reading them and thinking, yeah they really are on a different plane. I hadn’t noticed before, and haiku had felt formal, so it was a funny feeling for haiku to feel like the teenager in the room
Woah thanks! I just downloaded it and am amazed they didn’t make me create an account or anything. That is unique. I’m surprised that all Japanese is rendered in romaji
Yes I hope so, especially since this thread is in a public section of WK and therefore accessible via a search engine.
I plan to buy an edition with both the original classical text and a translation in modern Japanese in the same volumes, to make things a little bit more smooth. I know that it will be a very long endeavour, it’s an enormous cake that I plan to eat one very little piece at a time but right now I don’t have a level high enough anyway. And before doing all of this I also plan to read these two books : I found this simplified version for kids in a bookstore when I was in Duesseldorf, and also this one which belongs in a larger “Beginner’s classics” collection, very nice one by the way. There is also in one of the libraries I go to a beautiful illustrated edition in my native language, I will probably read it before.
But the idea of your friend with the manga version sounds really cool though, I wonder if it’s this one ? Reading your post made me suddenly remember this collection, I had already bought this other one and the illustrations are very pretty, so yeah that’s probably one more book, again, in my list
that’s a nice way to put it
You’re welcome, yeah I think it’s pretty disappointing that the Japanese script isn’t included, especially with the price ; you would think that’s a no-brainer, and yet… the translator also chose to transliterate in romaji while keeping the historical kana system, so, a reader who doesn’t know the rules of it will get wrong the pronunciation of some words. The justification as written in the intro was to “allow some readers to look up vocabulary in a classical Japanese dictionary” but it would have been so much better, in my opinion, to have in a horizontal line the Japanese text with the historical kana system and the furigana, and then, just below, in parallel to the translation, the romaji indicating directly the right pronunciation for both the student who doesn’t know or isn’t sure about the rules of the historical kana system and the reader who never studied the language.
The Japanese writing system is also so beautiful that even for someone who can’t read it it’s still just pretty to look at, and might even pushes someone to be more curious about it… at least it was certainly a huge spark for me before I started learning it. But anyway, it is what it is I guess
(edit : it’s the same in modern Japanese and it’s not specific to this book but, I also always thought that it was weird to romanize with “u” when there is a long vowel. To me it seems much less confusing to write “utsurō” instead of “utsurou”.)
The translation style of L. R. Rodd is also quite unique, sometimes I didn’t like it too much but there are a lot of times where it worked very well for me. I think it’s interesting to see the number of ways a waka can be translated, no matter what you do it will always be different from the original and there will always be the translator’s personal touch !
This is quite the project ニャン sits in corner and stares 
a cat, with cookies ! on my thread ! Welcome !!
For Genji, I really like the beginner version you found! I haven’t seen that. Here’s the manga series my friend recommended. She probably hasn’t reevaluated her rec based on new versions, so don’t take this as definitive:
There is so much to read!
These last few days, I realised how colder and stronger the wind suddenly seemed to me. It made me think about the very first poem of the Kokinshû’s first Autumn book.
古今集 0169 – 藤原敏行朝臣
秋立つ日よめる
Written on the first day of autumn
秋
It is still hidden
to my eyes, that autumn has come –
but then I understand
just by listening to
the sound of the wind
(I will add later the grammar and vocab notes, meanwhile you can also look at this very useful website)
I really like the French translation of Michel Vieillard-Baron :
L’automne est arrivé,
Cela ne paraît pas encore
Clairement aux yeux,
Mais au bruissement du vent
Soudain, je l’ai saisi.
Even though we are not officially in autumn yet, it’s already here, no doubt about that… I even saw a few leaves that were already turning to yellow and orange. There is a place where I live, with a lot of trees who have beautiful colors at autumn, I remember this moment where I was walking here with all the colorful leaves swirling in the air, it made me think about the Golden Temple in Ghost of Tsushima (even though it was clearly not as beautiful as the game) :
It’s somehow hard for me to explain why I love this poem. I just find the wind to be incredibly poetical, just as much as the moon, the snow, the autumn leaves, and the cherry blossoms. Freedom, coolness, the reassuring breeze on the skin, in the hair, in the grass ; the wind carrying away the petals, and the leaves. An invitation to adventure, running, going away, escaping. That’s what it evokes to me.
The flower fields in this game are just amazing, breathtaking. I also really like the pampa grass fields, when you are galloping through them or just walking through with Jin reaching them with his hand :
I enjoyed that poem’s connection to the wind! It’s so true, such a subtle sign of autumn that creeps up on our awareness
I’ve been searching recently to read more jisei, death poems. There is just something about some of them that I find so haunting and beautiful.
The first one was written by Gamô Ujisato, a military commander from the Sengoku period. According to this source, he died of an illness around the age of 39.
蒲生氏郷
限りあれば吹かねど花は散るものを心みじかき春の山風
Sakura blossoms
would have scattered even
without you –
but how impatient you are !
wind of the mountains
It really echoes, in my opinion, what Kenkô was writing in his Tsurezuregusa that I have already talked about in the Spring post :
« There is no choosing your moment, however, when it comes to illness, childbirth or death. You cannot call these things off because ‘the time isn’t right’. The truly momentous events of life […] are like the powerful current of a raging river. They surge ever forward without a moment’s pause. Thus, when it comes to the essentials […] you should not wait for the right moment in what you wish to achieve, nor dawdle over preparations. Your feet must never pause.
Summer does not come once spring is done, nor autumn arrive at the end of summer. Spring begins early to hold summer’s intimations […] Still swifter are the changes through human life, from birth to old age, sickness and death. The seasons progress in a fixed order. Not so the time of death. We do not always see its approach ; it can come upon us from behind. People know that they will die, but death will surprise them while they believe it is not yet close. » – translation by Meredith McKinney.
In Ujisato’s poem, the wind is the incarnation of the impatience and unpredictability of fate, and of death.
We know, in our mind, that we will die, but we still imagine it like something far and blurry. We think way too often that time is on our side, and that a very early and unexpected death isn’t in the “script” ; like it’s not supposed to happen to us. But then one day you wake up and you have some kind of strange pain in your body, you go to the doctor and you learn that you have cancer ; or you take the train and you realize that some lunatic is coming towards you with a knife ; or you turn on the TV and you learn that a pandemic has started. The Buddhist monks have this practice named maraṇasati ; the contemplation, mindfulness of death. But to be more aware of death is also being more aware of life ; when I have all these thoughts sometimes I just feel the urge to go outside to feel the cold on my skin, to run or to do some insanely intensive workout to physically feel life. I don’t remember exactly how he said it but there was this sentence from the dancer Derek Hough that I really liked, something like “when we are still in our body we are busy in our mind, when we are busy in our body we are still in our mind”. A reminder of the importance of physical exercice ! To move is to live…
The second poem is written by Matsumae Kinhiro ; I didn’t find a portrait of him. If what I’ve read online is not wrong he was, like Ujisato, a daimyô.
松前公広
来し道も帰る道にも只独りのこる姿は草の葉の露
Alone when I came
into this world – alone again
on the return path.
A drop of dew, nothing more ;
on a blade of grass.
We find here the very classic Buddhist metaphor of the dew for the fragility and impermanence of life, and the existential loneliness of the human condition. We enter this world alone in our body, in our mind ; and we leave it the same way. Once we have made these two observations, what do we do next ? That’s a question every one has to answer in its own, even though we can always discuss about it and take inspiration from others, but at the end of the day we are the only one in charge of our life, which can be very lonely, but also empowering at the same time.
I really like these two poems, there is just something about these two that clicks with me.
I still have to write the grammar and vocabulary notes, I will do it later.
It’s sometimes hard for me to read these poems because it always reminds me of the unfairness and randomness of life, and death. How many days do I still have ? Would it be better if I knew ? No, probably not. Will I be disappointed by the future, will my expectations be cut short ? There is no way to know, and it’s surely better that way.