Feeling Like Late Fall: Poem Number 29

November marks the last throes of Fall, and so with the recent cold here in the Pacific Northwest, I thought this poem seemed really fitting:

Japanese	Romanization	Translation
心あてに	Kokoroate ni	Must it be by chance,
折おらばや折おらむん	Orabaya oran	if I am to pluck one, that I pluck it? —
初霜の	Hatsushimo no	white chrysanthemums
おきまどはわせる	Oki madowaseru	on which the first frost
白菊の花	Shiragiku no hana	lies bewilderingly.

According to my new book, Ōshikōchi no Mitsuné (凡河内躬恒, dates unknown) was a middling bureaucrat in the Imperial Court, serving in provinces such as Tanba, Izumi, and Awaji, but never reaching beyond the sixth rank in the Court hierarchy. Nobility usually were fifth rank or higher by default so he hit the “glass ceiling” so to speak.

On the other hand, Mitsune was very prodigious poet and his works appear in many later anthologies in Japanese history, and is also one of the compilers of the famous Kokinshū anthology, a prestigious honor. Not surprisingly he is among the Thirty-Six Immortals of Poetry too.

Professor Mostow notes that this poem is subject to many different interpretations ranging from simple word-repetition, to rhetorical questions or the speaker’s mental debate.

In any case, the imagery of white frost on white chrysanthemum’s, and how it’s hard to distinguish one from the other, is in large part why this poem is so highly prized in antiquity, and made it into the Hyakunin Isshu anthology. However, the 19th century poet Masaoka Shiki criticized the imagery as unrealistic. But my new book points out that that probably wasn’t the point. Mitsuné was trying to be surreal in his imagery and that the poem executes this brilliantly.

But you decide: is the imagery of first frost on a white chrysanthemum too much? Or is it brilliant imagery?

P.S. Since antiquity, September 9th has been the Day of the Chrysanthemum in Japan, mirroring a similar festival in China.