Akikaze wa mi ni shimu bakari fukinikeri ima ya utsuran imo ga sagoromo

English Translation

The autumn wind now
blows so it pierces my flesh—
so it has become;
is my love now pounding out
the cloth of her humble robe?

Meaning

The autumn wind has come to blow so cold it pierces to the bone; is my beloved beating her robe on the fulling block even now?

Commentary

Book Five Autumn Poems II 475

Headnote: "Topic unknown."
This is the first poem of the fulling-block sequence. The autumn wind now blows cold enough to pierce the body, and the speaker wonders from afar whether his wife is beating robes at this moment. The headnote gives no topic, and the circumstances of composition are not recorded.
The author was an official and poet of the mid-Heian period.
The scene is late autumn when the wind pierces the body, both where the speaker stays apart from his wife and at her distant home.
The direct occasion is not recorded.
Fulling cloth with a mallet on a block was autumn night work done to soften cloth and give it sheen. Under the influence of Chinese poetry, waka too came to depict a wife beating robes while thinking of a husband far away.

In the first line, "wa" marks the autumn wind as the topic.
The second line, "mi ni shimu bakari," means "so much it pierces the body," showing how cold the wind is.
In the third line, "ni" is the continuative of the perfective "nu" and "keri" exclamatory, expressing the realization of the wind's chill. The poem breaks here. Taking up the autumn cold of 454 and the poems after it, the book turns to poems of robes.
In the fourth line, the interrogative "ya" is bound to "ran," the attributive of the conjectural "ramu," guessing that at this very moment someone far away is beating robes.
In the last line, "imo" is wife or beloved and "sa" a prefix. Ending on a noun, it names at the close the robe being beaten. The speaker imagines his wife preparing winter clothes for him as the cold deepens, and the fulling-block sequence opens from the standpoint of one who thinks from afar of the person beating robes.

Author

Fujiwara no Sukemasa

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other