Hitorine ya itodo sabishiki saoshika no asa fusu ono no kuzu no urakaze

English Translation

Does sleeping alone
weigh more lonely on the stag
who lies down at dawn
on the moor where the wind turns
the kudzu leaves inside out?

Meaning

Is sleeping alone all the lonelier for the stag that lies down at dawn on the moor, where the wind turns the kudzu leaves to show their pale undersides?

Commentary

Book Five Autumn Poems II 450

Headnote: "Composed for the Garden Plant Contest of Ikuhōmon'in."
This is the fourteenth poem of the deer sequence. The poet wonders whether the stag's solitary sleep is all the lonelier, and closes with the wind turning up the kudzu leaves on the moor where the stag lies down at dawn. According to the headnote, it was composed for a garden plant contest held by Ikuhōmon'in.
The author was an official and poet of the late Heian period.
The scene is an autumn morning, on a moor where kudzu grows.
The direct occasion was a garden plant contest held under Ikuhōmon'in, Princess Teishi, a daughter of Emperor Shirakawa who became titular mother of Emperor Horikawa. In such a contest, two teams presented garden plants with accompanying poems and competed for superiority.

In the first line, the interrogative "ya" is bound to "sabishiki" in the second line.
In the second line, "itodo" means "all the more," as the poet imagines the loneliness of sleeping alone deepening still further.
The third line reveals that the one sleeping alone is a stag—one that cried all night for its mate in vain.
The fourth line means "the moor where the stag, having cried through the night, lies down at dawn," with "o" a prefix. Following the night-waking poems 445 through 449, time moves on to morning.
The last line, ending on a noun, is the wind that flips the kudzu leaves to show their pale undersides. The chill of the wind over the stag's solitary bed and the whiteness of the leaves give concrete form to its loneliness. The wind turning the kudzu leaves echoes "kudzu meadow" and "urami" in 440, and the stag lying on the moor corresponds to "the grassy beds on the moor" in 439. There the bed was ruined and the stag had gone; here the stag lies alone in its bed, reversing the composition. "Alone" in the first line also resonates with the stag calling alone in 437.

Author

Fujiwara no Akitsuna

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other