朝霧やたつたの山の里ならで
秋来にけりと誰か知らまし
秋来にけりと誰か知らまし
- Roma-ji
-
Asagiri ya Tatsuta no yama no sato narade aki kinikeri to tare ka shiramashi
- English Translation
-
But for a village
below Tatsuta's hillside
where the morning mist
rises, who would ever know
that the autumn had arrived
- Meaning
- But for this village below the hills of Tatsuta, where the morning mist rises, who could have known that autumn had come?
- Commentary
-
Book Four Autumn Poems I 302
Headnote: on the theme of early autumn at a mountain house, when he had poems written at his residence while he was Middle Counsellor and Captain.
The topic is the early arrival of autumn at a house in the hills, set at the poet's own residence.
The poet, known by his titles and his residence, is Fujiwara no Tadamichi (1097-1164). He served as Regent and Chancellor and lived at Hossho-ji, from which he takes his name; he was also a noted calligrapher. Yoshitsune, poet of the opening piece of Book One, was his grandson, and Kanezane, poet of the two hundred and thirty-first in Book Three, his son.
The time is a morning in early autumn; the place is a village below Tatsuta on the border of Yamato and Kawachi.
The occasion was the set topic.
The first line leads into the place name: the verb for mist rising sounds the first part of the name, so that the mist and the mountain are bound by one sound. Yakamochi's eighty-fifth poem in Book One uses the same device with spring haze; here it is autumn mist.
The negative connective in the third line means: had it not been this village.
The fourth line quotes the phrase for autumn's arrival that has run through this book since its opening, set here inside a quotation.
In the closing line an interrogative particle stands with an auxiliary of contrary-to-fact supposition: no one could have known. The claim is that a mountain village learns the season first, and the topic's early autumn is answered in that form.
- Author
- Fujiwara no Tadamichi
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Prev Poem
-
Mishibu tsuki ueshi yamada ni hita haete mata sode nurasu aki wa kinikeri
- Next Poem
-
Yūgure wa ogi fuku kaze no oto masaru ima hata ika ni nezame seraremu