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

Other