Miyoshino wa yama mo kasumite shirayuki no furinishi sato ni haru wa kinikeri

English Translation

In fair Yoshino
the mountains too are hazing
to the old village
where white snow had fallen down
now spring has come once again

Meaning

The mountains of Yoshino have grown hazy, and to this old village, where the white snow was falling, spring has come at last.

Commentary

Book One Spring Poems I 1

Headnote: composed on the theme of the coming of spring.
This poem stands at the head of Book One, Spring Poems I, of the Shin Kokin Wakashu. The opening of an imperial anthology declares the character of the whole collection, and by convention the spring section begins with a poem on the first day of spring. The headnote shows that it was written on that assigned theme. Set in the snowbound village of Yoshino, it announces that spring has reached even that ancient place where the white snow had lain, and it carries the brightness proper to an opening.
The poet, given as Regent and Chancellor, is Fujiwara no Yoshitsune (1169-1206), also known as Kujo Yoshitsune. He was the second son of the Regent Fujiwara no Kanezane, served as the leading member of the Bureau of Poetry, and wrote the Japanese preface to the Shin Kokin Wakashu. He became regent to Emperor Tsuchimikado in 1202 and later rose to Chancellor.
The moment is the first day of spring; the place is Yoshino in Yamato Province, a celebrated poetic site in what is now Nara Prefecture. Deep in snow, and once the site of an ancient detached palace, Yoshino was long spoken of as an old capital, an old home.
The immediate occasion was a set topic. The poem is preserved in Yoshitsune's personal collection, the Akishino Gessei-shu, among his hundred poems on assigned themes, composed on the topic of the first day of spring.
Its placement at the very front of the anthology fixed Yoshitsune's standing as a poet. He took it into his own self-matched sequence, and it later gave rise to variations such as Minamoto no Sanetomo's poem in the Shin Chokusen Wakashu.
Seventy-nine of Yoshitsune's poems entered the Shin Kokin Wakashu, the third largest number after Saigyo and Jien. This poem was also gathered into later selections such as Teika's Hachidaisho.

The first line raises the name of Yoshino, a famous poetic site in Yamato. The model poem is Mibu no Tadamine's verse in the Shui Wakashu, which asks whether it is merely because people say spring has begun that Yoshino's mountains seem hazy this morning. Yoshitsune alters the model's particle so that the place name governs both the mountains and the village below, turning the line into a statement of theme.
In the second line the haze is the standard sign of spring. The mountains of Yoshino, until now closed in snow, grow indistinct, and with them the season turns. The particle reaches past the mountains toward the village named in the fourth line.
In the third and fourth lines the verb carries two senses at once: snow falling, and a place grown old. The white snow and the old village are held in a single word, and behind the village stands Yoshino as a former imperial seat, an old capital.
The closing line ends with an auxiliary of realization and wonder: spring, unnoticed until this moment, is suddenly here. The whiteness of the snow and the faintness of the haze stand against each other, and the brightness of the new season settles over a desolate old capital.
Where the poem that follows, by Retired Emperor Go-Toba, finds spring in the sky, this one finds it in a village on the ground. Read together, the two open the anthology as a pair, heaven and earth.

Author

Fujiwara no Yoshitsune

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other