Before the year turns,
spring has already arrived;
one passing year—
shall I call it last year,
or this year, I wonder?
- Meaning
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Before the New Year has even begun, spring has already arrived. With the turning of the seasons, should the year that has just passed be called last year, because winter has ended, or should it be called this year, since the New Year has not yet come?
- Commentary
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Volume One: Spring Songs (Upper)
A poem composed on a day when the Beginning of Spring fell within the old year.
In the lunisolar calendar, months are reckoned by the moon, and a year is adjusted with twelve or thirteen months, so it does not neatly align with the four seasons divided into quarters. In principle, the Beginning of Spring is taken to coincide with New Year’s Day, but in practice it falls between mid–Twelfth Month and early First Month.
This poem expresses the contradiction between two ways of reckoning the New Year: one that begins the year from New Year’s Day, and another that begins it from the Beginning of Spring.
- Author
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Ariwara no Motokata
- Source
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Kokin Wakashu
- Other
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Matsuyama’s waves
keep the old, familiar face,
never changing.
Yet you, my beloved,
fade, losing even form.
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With sleeves soaked through,
the water once I cupped now froze;
now, on this spring day,
is today’s gentle wind
melting that ice away?
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Spring haze rising—
where can it be found at all?
Here in fair Yoshino,
on Yoshino’s mountain slopes,
snow is still falling.