Similar to the previous poem, this one deals with the moon, but I think this poem epitomizes the winter season:

Japanese	Romanization	Translation
朝ぼらけ	Asaboraké	So that I thought it
有明の月と	Ariake no tsuki to	the light of the lingering moon
みるまでに	Miru made ni	at dawn—
吉野の里に	Yoshino no sato ni	the white snow that has fallen
ふれる白雪	Fureru shirayuki	on the village of Yoshino

The author, Sakanoue no Korenori (坂上是則, dates unknown), is one of the Thirty-Six Immortals of Poetry, but otherwise nothing much is known about him.

This poem, as Professor Mostow explains, is similar to poem 29, and is part of a theme on “elegant confusion” which is a hallmark of Chinese poetry. Early poetry in Japan was still greatly indebted to Chinese poetry and many of the imagery, and idioms used in the Hyakunin Isshu anthology are not exception.

I happen to like this poem also because it has a lot of obscure, but cool Japanese poetic terms. We’ve seen ariaké discussed in poem 30. However, this poem also uses the term asaboraké (朝ぼらけ) which as we say in poem 64 means that period of time in the dawn, in either winter or autumn, when things are hazy. It’s a kind of slow, late dawn that you only find in that time of year. Compare with akatsuki (暁), which Professor Mostow explains can mean “dawn” any time of the year. Since asaboraké is used in two poems in the Hyakunin Isshu, it makes the kimari-ji for each poem particularly tricky.

The village of Yoshino that this poem refers to, is none other than the iconic village of Yoshino in Nara Prefecture.