The Hyakunin Isshu

This is a well-known poem in the Hyakunin Isshu, and I felt worth posting here:

The author, Fujiwara no Toshinari (1114-1204), or “Shunzei”, is the father of Fujiwara no Teika (poem 97) who compiled the Hyakunin Isshu anthology and was the foremost poetry expert of his time. Additionally, a surprising number of other poets in the Hyakunin Isshu were associated with (poem 81, 86 and 87), or studied under Shunzei (poem 89 and 98) or were directly in opposition to him (poem 79). Shunzei is probably the second most important person in the Hyakunin Isshu after his son of course. 🙂

This poem is both moving and technically strong. For example, according to Mostow, the phrase omoi iru is a “pivot word”, meaning that both the words before and after hinge on its double meanings: omoi-iru “to set one’s heart on” and iru “to enter”.

Again, as Mostow explains, the poem generates quite a bit of debate because it’s not clear what concerned him so much. Was it melancholy, a sense of his mortality, or was the state of society at the time (i.e. the decline of the Heian Period)?

Speaking of a deer’s cry, I found this video one of the famous “Nara deer”:

The Nara deer are more domesticated versions of the wild deer in Japan, but it gives you an idea what Shunzei must have heard deep in the woods 900 years ago.

P.S. See poem 5 for something similar.