Ima yori wa akikaze samuku narinu beshi ikade ka hitori nagaki yo o nen

English Translation

From now on, surely,
the autumn wind will blow cold—
so it's bound to be;
how then shall I sleep alone
through the long nights that remain?

Meaning

From now on the autumn wind is bound to turn cold; how can I sleep alone through the long nights?

Commentary

Book Five Autumn Poems II 457

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Topic unknown."
This is the fifth poem of the sequence on autumn fields and the autumn chill. The speaker laments that the autumn wind will soon turn cold, and wonders how to sleep alone through the long nights. The headnote, continued from the preceding poem, gives no topic, and the Shinkokinshū records no circumstances of composition.
The author was a Nara-period poet and son of Ōtomo no Tabito who rose to Middle Counselor.
The scene is a night in the season when the autumn wind is about to turn cold, in a bedchamber where the speaker sleeps alone.
According to the Man'yōshū, the direct occasion was grief for a concubine who had died.
Book Three of the Man'yōshū records it as "Ima yori wa akikaze samuku fukinamu o ika ni ka hitori nagaki yo o nemu," composed in the sixth month of 739 in grief for a concubine who had died. The Shinkokinshū gives the third line as "narinu beshi" and the fourth as "ikade ka hitori."

The first line, "ima yori wa," means "from now on," looking ahead to the season to come.
The second line presents the chill of the autumn wind; it is one of the poems on the cold continuing from 454.
In the third line, "nu" is intensive and "beshi" conjectural, meaning "it is sure to turn cold." The poem breaks here.
In the fourth line, "ikade ka" is rhetorical, meaning "how could I ...?" "Hitori" carries the loneliness of having lost the one who shared the bed.
In the last line, "n" is the attributive of the conjectural "mu," bound to "ka." The cold wind and the length of the night compound the misery of sleeping alone. Where 450 imagined the loneliness of the stag "sleeping alone," this poem voices a human's grief at sleeping alone, carrying the same theme from deer to people. The long autumn night also echoes "a long while now has gone by—this long autumn night" in 447.

Author

Otomo no Yakamochi

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other