Autumn is here! Poem Number 69

Photo taken by author

My favorite season, Autumn, is fast approaching so I thought this would be a good poem:

JapaneseRomanizationTranslation
あらし吹くArashi fukuIt’s the autumn leaves
三室の山のMimuro no yama noof the hills of Mimuro,
もみぢ葉はMomijiba wawhere the tempests blow,
龍田の川のTatsuta no kawa nothat are the woven brocade floating
にしきなりけりNishiki nari kerion the waters of Tatsuta River!
Translation by Dr Joshua Mostow

The author, Nōin Hōshi (“Dharma Master” Nōin, b. 988) was originally Tachibana no Nagayasu until the age of 26 when he took tonsure. From there, he traveled the provinces, composing poetry and contributed to various anthologies at the time. Because he was not tied to a politically prominent temple, he had more freedom than other monks in the Capitol to roam the countryside and write in his travels.

Professor Mostow notes that this poem is unusual because it’s very straightforward with no hidden wordplay or anything. It’s just a nice, solid poem about Autumn.

As for the geography, Mt. Mimuro (三室山, mimuroyama) is in Nara Prefecture in Ikoma-gun, Ikaruga Village, while the famous Tatsuta-gawa River (竜田川) flows beside it. It was said in the old days that the gods would dwell at the mountain from time to time. In fact, you might recall hearing this river mentioned before all the way back in Poem 17. 😉

Mt Mimuro (Mimuroyama) and the Tatsuta-gawa River, photo by Kansai explorer, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

In those days, travel to places like Mimuro Mountain were generally hard to do for people, even the nobility. A day-hike into the mountains to see such a river was an expensive and exhausting affair as one had to bring their retinue, plan for food and supplies, etc.

So, many poems in the Hyakunin Isshu express famous places like this even though few people from the Court actually went there. It allowed people in those days to at least imagine what it would be like to visit even if they couldn’t afford to actually see it in person. Like a poetic “guidebook” in a sense. Hence, while the description may be vivid and perhaps a little exaggerated, it helped to stir the imagination, just as it does for people living outside Japan. 🙂

P.S. For some reason, the last part of the Hyakunin Isshu has a lot of poems about Autumn in particular, so expect to see these soon amidst other things.

2 responses to “Autumn is here! Poem Number 69”

  1. Reblogged this on Essays in Idleness and commented:
    Happy Friday, everyone! This autumn, the weather in Seattle has been pleasant and warm, and I’m excited for the coming of Halloween and Thanksgiving. So, to share in the joy, I wanted to share this poem from my other blog. Enjoy!

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: