Sakura saku tōyamadori no shidario no naganagashi hi mo akanu iro kana

English Translation

Where the cherries bloom
like the long-trailing tail of
a far mountain bird
the long, long day is not time
enough to tire of that hue

Meaning

Long as the trailing tail of a pheasant on the far hills where the cherries bloom, the whole long day is not enough to tire of this colour.

Commentary

Book Two Spring Poems II 99

Headnote: for a screen showing cherries in flower on a mountain, at the time of the ninetieth-birthday celebration held for Shakua at the Bureau of Poetry.
This poem opens Book Two, Spring Poems II. Where the first book followed spring from its arrival to the first cherry blossom, this one covers the height of the flowering and the end of the season. The poem was written to accompany a painted screen of mountain cherries. Shakua in the headnote is the religious name of Fujiwara no Shunzei, and the occasion was the celebration of his ninetieth year at the Bureau of Poetry.
The poet, given as Retired Emperor, is Go-Toba, who appeared in Book One as the poet of the second, eighteenth and thirty-sixth poems.
The time is a day at the height of the cherry season; the place is a mountain shown on a screen. Shunzei's ninetieth-birthday celebration was held in 1204.
The occasion was the screen poem for that celebration. Since the gathering marked a long life, saying that a long day is still not enough carries the sense of a birthday wish.
The model is the poem attributed to Kakinomoto no Hitomaro about the long trailing tail of the mountain pheasant and a long night spent alone.

The first line gives the painted scene and runs straight on into the far mountain of the second.
The second line folds together the far mountain and the mountain pheasant; the third names its trailing tail, and everything to that point works as a preface leading into the word for length below. The construction is the model poem's own.
The fourth line is where the turn from the model occurs. The older poem laments a long night spent alone; this one changes night to day and takes that same length as time for looking at flowers. Grief is reversed into praise.
The verb at the close means not to be satisfied, not to have one's fill. With an exclamatory particle, the statement that even a whole long day is not enough becomes the language of celebration.
Book One ended by mistaking blossom for snow; this book begins by gazing at the colour of the flowers themselves and finding it inexhaustible.

Author

Go-Toba In

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other