Suzushisa wa aki ya kaerite Hatsusegawa furukawa no be no sugi no shitakage

English Translation

Has the autumn come
back again, for the coolness
by the Hatsuse
in the shade of the cedars
along the old river bank

Meaning

Is it that autumn has come back? This coolness in the cedar shade along the old channel of the Hatsuse.

Commentary

Book Three Summer Poems 261

Headnote: on the theme of the coolness at the waterside coming from autumn, when Chinese poems were matched against Japanese ones at the residence of the Regent and Chancellor.
The second poem on coolness. The topic is a line of Chinese verse rendered into Japanese. Gatherings at which Chinese and Japanese poems were paired appear in the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth poems of Book One and the thirty-sixth of Book Two.
The poet, given by his court title, is Fujiwara no Ariie, a son of Fujiwara no Shigeie, of the Rokujo house, and one of the compilers of the Shin Kokin Wakashu. In Book Two he is the poet of the fifty-third and others. Shigeie, poet of the hundred and eighty-first piece, was his father.
The time is summer; the place is the Hatsuse River in Yamato Province and its old channel.
The occasion was the set topic.

The first line raises the subject, answering to the word for coolness in the topic.
An interrogative particle in the second line asks whether autumn has returned, and takes up the topic's claim that the coolness comes from autumn. After the two hundred and fifty-seventh poem, which mistook wind in bamboo for autumn, this one mistakes the season by its coolness.
The third line names the river, which runs past Hase-dera in Yamato; Yoshitsune's hundred and fifty-seventh poem in Book Two takes the mountain of the same name.
The fourth line names the old channel, and the sound of the word for old sets an age against the name of the river.
The poem closes on a noun. The waterside of the topic and the shade that is the actual source of the coolness are joined. Dividing a Chinese line into three elements across five lines is the method of the fifty-fifth poem in Book One and the hundred and fifty-second in Book Two.

Author

Fujiwara no Ariie

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other