Karahito no fune o ukabete asobu chō kyō zo wagaseko hanakazura se yo

English Translation

The people of Tang
set their boats afloat, they say
and made merry, so
today, my friend, wear flowers
woven into a garland

Meaning

They say the people of China set boats afloat and made merry on this day: so today, my friend, put on a garland of flowers.

Commentary

Book Two Spring Poems II 151

Headnote: composed on the winding-water banquet.
Two poems on the observance of the third day of the third month follow. The banquet named in the headnote is the one in which cups are floated down a stream while verses are composed, a practice brought from China.
The poet, given by his court title, is Otomo no Yakamochi, a Nara-period poet thought to have had a large hand in compiling the Man'yoshu. In Book One he is the poet of the twentieth and eighty-fifth poems.
The time is the third day of the third month; the place is beside the stream where the banquet is held.
The occasion was the set subject of the banquet.

The first line names the people of China, so that the foreign origin of the observance is stated at once.
The second line refers to the floating of cups, seen as boats.
The construction closing the third line is a contraction meaning that so it is said: the practice is known by report.
The word in the fourth line is a term of address to a close male friend, and an emphatic particle marks the day.
The compound at the close names a garland of flowers worn in the hair, with an imperative. The eighty-eighth poem of Book One and the hundred and fourth of this one use a related verb, so that wearing flowers recurs as a pattern in the spring poems. The interest here lies in laying an old native custom over an imported observance.

Author

Otomo no Yakamochi

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other