Ōigawa kagari sashiyuku ukaibune ikuse ni natsu no yo o akasuramu

English Translation

Down the Oi, poles
and torches, the cormorant
boats are going on
and at how many shallows
will they see the night through here

Meaning

The cormorant boats go down the Oi with their torches raised: at how many shallows will they pass the summer night?

Commentary

Book Three Summer Poems 253

Headnote: for the contest in fifteen hundred rounds.
The third poem on cormorant fishing, on boats moving from shallow to shallow through the night. The headnote assigns it to the contest in fifteen hundred rounds.
The poet, given by his court title, is Fujiwara no Shunzei; this is his sixth appearance in this book, after the two hundred and first and others.
The time is a summer night; the place is the Oi River in Yamashiro Province, which runs below Arashiyama and was known for this fishing.
The occasion was submission to the contest.

The first line raises the place. The two poems before it gave the Uji and an unnamed river; here another well-known site is set down.
The verb in the second line means to hold a torch up. In the previous poem the same verb meant to pole a boat, and it is used here in another sense.
The third line places in the middle of the poem the words that opened the two before it, so that three pieces turn on one phrase.
The fourth line asks at how many shallows, showing that the boats do not stay in one place but work from one to the next.
The auxiliary at the close expresses present conjecture. A night's work is reasoned about by someone not present, and the shortness of a summer night is laid over the figures of those who spend it fishing.

Author

Fujiwara no Shunzei

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other