Karite hosu yamada no ine wa sode hichite ueshi sanae to miezu mo aru kana

English Translation

The mountain rice plants
reaped and hung up now to dry
no longer appear
as the seedlings that I set,
sleeves soaked through, in the paddy

Meaning

The rice from the mountain paddy, reaped and hung to dry, no longer looks like the seedlings I planted with my sleeves soaked through.

Commentary

Book Five Autumn Poems II 460

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Topic unknown."
This is the eighth and final poem of the sequence on autumn fields and the autumn chill. The rice reaped and hung to dry in the mountain paddy has changed so much that it no longer looks like the seedlings planted with sleeves soaked through. The headnote, continued from the preceding poem, gives no topic, and the circumstances of composition are not recorded.
The author was an early Heian poet and one of the compilers of the Kokinshū. He served as governor of Tosa and wrote the Tosa Diary.
The scene is after the autumn harvest, at a mountain paddy where the reaped rice is hung to dry.
The direct occasion is not recorded.

The first line, "karite hosu," means the reaped rice is being dried, showing the scene after the harvest.
The second line presents the subject, the rice of the mountain paddy.
In the third line, "hitsu" means to be soaked in water, recalling the sleeves wet from planting the seedlings. Unlike the dew-soaked sleeves of 454, these are sleeves wet from the water of the planting season.
In the fourth line, "shi" is the attributive of the past auxiliary "ki," looking back on the seedlings once planted; "sanae" are young rice plants moved from the seedbed to the paddy.
In the last line, "mo" is emphatic and "kana" exclamatory, expressing wonder that it no longer looks like the same rice. The change from green seedlings to ripened grain reaped and dried marks the passage from summer to autumn. Like 456, which sang of "fields planted" and reaped amid the cries of geese, this poem contrasts planting and harvest, and it closes the sequence on autumn fields. From 461 the book turns to dew.

Author

Ki no Tsurayuki

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other