Akikaze no itari itaranu sode wa araji tada warekara no tsuyu no yūgure

English Translation

There is not a sleeve
the autumn wind has not reached
and does not reach too
it is only from ourselves
this dew, this evening of ours

Meaning

There is no sleeve the autumn wind reaches and another it does not: this dew comes from ourselves alone, on an evening like this.

Commentary

Book Four Autumn Poems I 366

Headnote: as in the preceding poem, an autumn poem.
The tenth poem on the autumn evening. Since the wind reaches every sleeve alike, the tears must come from within. The original gives no fresh headnote.
Kamo no Chomei (c. 1155-1216) was born into a family of priests of the Shimogamo shrine. Accomplished in poetry and in music, he later took orders and wrote the Hojoki. He studied poetry under the Monk Shune, poet of the sixth piece in Book One and the hundred and forty-second in Book Two.
The time is an autumn evening; no place is given.
The occasion was the writing of an autumn poem.

The first two lines pair the same verb affirmed and denied: where it reaches and where it does not.
The auxiliary in the third line expresses negative conjecture: there will be no such thing. The premise is confirmed that the wind blows on every sleeve alike, the form of Daini no Sanmi's three hundred and tenth poem, which said there was no blade of grass without dew.
The word in the fourth line means by one's own doing; it is also the name of a small creature found on seaweed, and that name is what brings the sound of the word for self into the line. It assigns the cause of the tears not to the wind but to the person.
The poem closes on a noun. It is the claim of Echizen's two hundred and ninety-seventh poem, which made the dew something settling out of the heart, so that one argument returns near the end of the book as it stood near its beginning.

Author

Kamo no Chomei

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other