Miru hito no sode o zo shioru aki no yo wa tsuki ni ikanaru kage ka souramu

English Translation

They wring out the sleeves
of those who look, and what light
is it that is joined
to the moon on autumn nights
that it should work on them so

Meaning

It soaks the sleeves of those who look: on autumn nights, what light can it be that is added to the moon?

Commentary

Book Four Autumn Poems I 409

Headnote: sent on looking at the moon.
An exchange on the moon follows. This poem asks why the autumn moon should make people weep, and was sent to another; the four hundred and tenth is the reply.
The poet, given by his court title, was a mid-Heian poet. A poem by him appears in Book Nine, at the eight hundred and sixty-seventh.
The time is a night in autumn; no place is given.
The occasion was the sending of the poem.

An emphatic particle in the first two lines governs the verb, which means to soak, used in the Dainagon of Shichijoin's four hundred and second poem.
The third line fixes the scene.
The word in the fourth line means of what kind.
The word at the close means light, with an interrogative particle and an auxiliary of present conjecture. The question is why the same moon should make people weep in autumn: is something added to the light? It is the stance of Saigyo's three hundred and sixty-seventh poem, which asked the reason for autumn's sadness; there the season at large, here the moon in particular. The phrase for light being added is the one used in Horikawa's three hundred and eighty-third poem, and here it becomes the thing questioned.

Author

Fujiwara no Norinaga

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other