The author, Ki no Tomonori (紀友則, ? – 905?), was the cousin of Ki no Tsurayuki (poem 35). Tomonori is one of the Thirty-Six Immortals of Poetry, and helped to compile another famous poetry anthology, the Kokinshū (古今集).
The Kokinshū, formerly known as the Kokin Waka Shū (古今和歌集 “Collection of Ancient and Modern Japanese Poetry”) was completed in 905 and was the first of many efforts by the ancient Court to compile the best poetry, past and present, into an official anthology. The Hyakunin Isshu by contrast was one man’s effort in his retirement. More on that in a later post. As for Tomonori, it is said that he didn’t live to see the completion of the Kokinshū, sadly.
As for this poem, this is one of the most famous in the collection and emblematic of Spring, but also the fleeting nature of the world, and the touch of melancholy that comes with it. Truly this is a lovely poem. It also has a textbook example of a pillow word in the form of ひさかたの (hisakata no) in its opening verse, also used in poem 76.
P.S. Special thanks to “E.G.” for some typo fixes in the poem.
Well, the book was actually published in 1996, but I came across this book only recently: Joshua S. Mostow’s Pictures of the Heart: The Hyakunin Isshu in Word and Image. The book is a serious effort to study the Hyakunin Isshu, and not for a casual reader, but also the history and culture around it, while offering fresh, new translations.
The first chapter alone, dealing with issues of historiography and deconstruction, makes my head hurt, but it makes an important argument: that only studying the poems themselves, and ignoring their role in Japanese culture leads readers to a one-sided view. Mastov demonstrates how some poems have even changed and evolved over time, depending on which book published the poem over the centuries. Sometimes, even in antiquity, poems were radically different depending on which book, so Mastov explores the various debates surrounding each poem. Who knew a few lines of verse could cause so much scholarly debate?
The book is a great read because for each poem, it carefully analyzes it, provides historical context, artwork and shows how the poem has been interpreted over the generations. It often debunks certain assumptions too. For example, Poem Number 6 is traditionally thought to allude to the story of Tanabata, but in fact Mastov demonstrates how this is a later interpretation.
The translations for the poems as well are quite good, readable, and well thought out in my opinion. The book is a weighty tome, but for any serious students of Japanese poetry, and in particular the Hyakunin Isshu, I highly recommend it.
As tonight is a Worm Moon, but also one where the moon is the closest in its orbit to Earth in 19 years, I thought this was a fitting poem, and also one of my favorite:
According to historical accounts, Abé no Nakamaro (阿倍仲麻呂, 701 – 770), the author, went to China to study at the age of 16. This was part of the yearly mission made by Japan to the Imperial Tang Court in China. The missions to China from Japan (or Kentō-shi 遣唐使) were perilous undertakings due to poor ship construction and storms from the south, so they didn’t come often, and sometimes got shipwrecked.
He spent many years in China and became friends with famous poets at the time such as Li Bo and Wang Wei, and was in the service of the Chinese emperor Xuan-Zong for a time. But after so many years of service, it was time for Nakamaro to return to Japan, and according to the story, on the night before he departed, his friends in China threw him a farewell feast. That evening, he looked up and saw a beautiful moon, and composed this poem. It was at Mount Mikasa many years before that Nakamaro prayed for safe return someday from China, and he remembered that same moon so many years ago. This is depicted in the featured photo above from a woodblock print collection (print number 64) called the One Hundred Aspects of the Moon by Yoshitoshi.
Sadly, his return trip failed, and the ship was blown off course to the land of Annam, where he then trekked back to China and eventually passed away never seeing his homeland again.
This poem was composed by Chūnagon Yakamochi (中納言家持, 718 – 785), or “Middle Councillor Yakamochi”. He is also known as Ōtomo no Yakamochi (大伴家持). Yakamochi was from a prestigious but declining family at the time, and is credited with compiling the Manyoshu, the earliest extant poetry anthology we have today. Yakamochi also contributed many of his own poems to the Manyoshu (compiler’s privilege?), and is considered one of the Thirty Six Immortals of Poetry.
Unfortunately, Yakamochi later got caught up in a series political intrigues, and after achieving the rank of Middle Counselor, he was first sidelined to a remote post, and later after drowning in a river. Worse, just after his death in 785, a powerful noble named Fujiwara no Tanetsugu was assassinated, and Yakamochi was implicated as part of the plot, despite being dead. Thus the Otomo family name was disgraced until 806 when Yakamochi was posthumously pardoned and his rank restored.
Anyhow, this poem’s reference to the Magpie’s Bridge comes from two places: the Imperial Palace at the time had a set of stairs called the Magpie’s Bridge, but also in later generations, this also referred to the famous legend of Tanabata. On the night when Orihime and Hikoboshi would meet every year, they could cross a bridge made of magpies whose wings were extended end to end.
In both ways, the poem expresses a lonely, long, and cold winter’s night.
Reading classical Japanese is hard enough as it is, what with its unusual spellings and archaic vocabulary, but what makes the Hyakunin Isshu interesting, among other things, is the colorful, poetic phrases sometimes used. These phrases are strictly literary, and tend to have a dramatic sound to them, but when translating to English sometimes the meaning is lost. These words are called makura kotoba (枕詞) or “pillow words”. The term “pillow” here has no romantic connotations whatsoever, but is simply a reference to poetry. Presumably, people in the old days sat in their rooms, leaning on a pillow, composing poetry in their idle time, I guess.
Anyway, pillow words can be thought of as “filler” phrases, because they don’t have much meaning themselves, but they dress up the poems a lot more. For example in this poem, number 17:
千早ぶる Chihayaburu 神代もきかず kamiyo mo kikazu 龍田川 Tatsutagawa からくれないに karakurenai ni 水くくるとは mizu kukuru to wa
The pillow words “Chihayaburu” (千早ぶる) can mean something like “1,000 swift [swords]” or something, but really just dresses up the next word, 神 (kami, “a god”). So in modern English, it’s not just a god, but an awesome, awe-inspiring god. Likewise, in poem 2 we see another shining example.
春過ぎて Haru sugite 夏来にけらし natsu ki ni kerashi 白妙の shirotae no 衣ほすてふ koromo hosu chō 天の香具山 Ama no Kaguyama
Here again the pillow word shirotae no (白妙の) means something like gleaming white. The sheets being dried on Kaguyama mountain are not just white, but gleaming white, and a lovely contrast to the sunny, summer day in which they are being dried.
Such pillow-words don’t really exist in English, but they are very easy to find in classical Greek literature, especially the writings of Homer. Consider these epithets frequently used in the Iliad:
Goddess of the white arms, Hera: θεὰ λευκώλενος Ἥρη (thea leukōlenos Hērē)
Whenever I read the Iliad, I always find that these epithets really bring out the drama in the text.
Peter Paul Rubens – Achilles slays Hector
In the same way, the pillow-words in the Hyakunin Isshu are frequently used in certain common combinations:
chihayaburu (千早ぶる) – used to describe the Shinto divinities or Kami (神). See iconic poem 17.
shirotae no (白妙の) – used to describe something white, in particular snow, clouds or cloth. Its literal meaning is taken from the color of fresh mulberry paper. See poem 2 and poem 4.
ashibiki no (あしびきの) – used sometimes to describe mountains (山, “yama”) and peaks. Its meaning is something like “foot-drawn”. See poem 3.
hisakata no (ひさかたの) – used to describe things like the sky (空, “sora”), moon (月, “tsuki”), rain (雨, “amé”), clouds (雲, “kumo”), light (光, “hikari”), night (夜, “yoru”), and even the capitol (都, “miyako”). Its meaning is something like peaceful, shining, and especially everlasting. See poem 33 and poem 76.
Some examples of pillow words used in Japanese waka poetry, but not found in the Hyakunin Isshu are:
ubatama no (烏羽玉の) – describes the color “jet-black” and often used to describe hair or night. An example is found in the Kokinshuanthology, poem 647.
aoniyoshi (あをによし) – used to describe the old capital of Nara itself. Poem 328 in the Manyoshu is one such example. The word aoni (青丹) refers to a high-quality bluish-black pigment that was derived from soil around the Nara area.
umasaké (味酒) – used to describe the sacred mountains around Nara (see poem 2 in the Hyakunin Isshu) implying the essence of delicious rice wine. Think Dionysus from Greek mythology. You can an example in the Manyoshu, poem 17.
yasumishishi (八隅知し, or 安見知し) – refers to the august reign of an Emperor, spanning the eight cardinal directions.Manyoshu poems 50 and 923 both contain this phrase.
isanatori (いさなとり), originally from an archaic word for “whale” (いさな) is used with words such as the ocean, beach, etc. Poem 3852 in the Manyoshu is an example.
Many of these phrases are 5-syllable phrases (sometimes 4), so they “slot” in seamlessly in a typical waka poem (5-7-5-7-7 syllables). In later ages, the number of pillow words increased to about 1,200 phrases, though many of them remain pretty obscure. Even in modern poetry, these stock phrases are still very much in use.
Interestingly, my book on the Manyoshu explains that some of these phrases do not appear until they are used in poetry by Kakinomoto Hitomaro (poem 3, あし), implying that he coined some of these phrases himself. Of the hundreds of documented pillow words, at least 50 are attributed to Hitomaro including some listed above.
Pillow words are hard to translate, but they are a fascinating window into Japanese culture in antiquity.
The author, Ki no Tsurayuki (紀貫之, ? – 945), is among the primary composers of the official anthology, the Kokin Wakashū (古今和歌集), and the person who coined the Six Immortals of Poetry therein. He wrote the famous and fictional Tosa Diary, and is also the cousin of Ki no Tomonori who composed poem 33.
The Kokin Wakashu explains the background to this poem. Whenever Ki no Tsurayuki would make a pilgrimage to Hatsuse (初瀬, modern day Hasedera Temple in Nara), he would stay at a friend’s house along the way. After an extended absence, when Tsurayuki visited again, the owner sent this poem to him with a branch of plum blossoms attached. Mostow hints that in one interpretation, the owner might have been a woman who was sad that he hadn’t visited in a long time, though other interpretations imply the author was a man, and the meaning was more platonic.
Here the reference to “blossoms” is for plum blossoms in particular, called umé (梅). We’ve seen the popularity of plum blossoms over cherry blossoms (sakura 桜) in antiquity even as far back as the Manyoshu.
The Hyakunin Isshu 