Yama fukami haru to mo shiranu matsu no to ni taedae kakaru yuki no tamamizu

English Translation

The mountains are deep
and know nothing of the spring
on this door of pine
drop by broken drop there falls
the jewelled water of snow

Meaning

So deep are the mountains that the pine-wood door does not know spring has come, and onto it, drop by broken drop, falls the jewel-like water of melting snow.

Commentary

Book One Spring Poems I 3

Headnote: a spring poem, from the time when she presented a hundred-poem sequence.
This is the third poem at the head of the anthology. The headnote refers to the Shoji hundred-poem sequences of 1200, commissioned by Retired Emperor Go-Toba. He called for hundred-poem sets from poets ranging from imperial princes and ministers to the poets of the court, and the undertaking laid the foundation of his salon. For Princess Shokushi, who had almost never appeared at public poetry contests or gatherings, it was the occasion on which her work became widely known.
Princess Shokushi (c. 1149-1201) was a daughter of Emperor Go-Shirakawa. Chosen while still a child as High Priestess of the Kamo Shrine, she held that office for more than ten years. After leaving it she studied poetry under Fujiwara no Shunzei and kept company with his son Teika.
The scene is early spring, at a hut deep in the mountains: the season when the villages below have turned to spring while snow still lies in the hills.
The immediate occasion was the assigned topic of spring.
Having composed this sequence, Princess Shokushi died in the first month of the following year, 1201. Twenty-five of her poems from the Shoji sequences entered the Shin Kokin Wakashu, more than from any other poet's contribution to it, and the placing of this poem third, after Yoshitsune and Go-Toba, marks the regard in which she was held.

The first line means that the mountains are deep, and its grammar - an adjective stem with a suffix - states a cause: because they are deep, what follows is so.
The second line says that in the mountains the coming of spring is not known, though the villages below have already turned. Where the first two poems of the anthology declare outright that spring has come, this one sets a negative in their place and shows a scene that has not yet crossed over. Read as a set of three, the poems build the arrival of spring by degrees.
In the third line the door of pine is a rough door made of pine branches, the mark of a dwelling far from any village. Some read it instead as a door standing in the shade of pines.
The fourth line describes water falling in broken, intermittent drops. Because the dripping does not run on, the silence of the mountains is felt the more.
The poem closes on a noun. The jewelled water is water in drops as beautiful as gems, here the melt of snow. Winter's snow, changing into water, carries the first sign of spring, and the ending appeals to hearing as much as to sight, to the sound of the falling drops as much as to their light.

Author

Princess Shokushi

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other