み吉野の山の秋風さ夜更けて
古里寒く衣打つなり
古里寒く衣打つなり
- Roma-ji
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Miyoshino no yama no akikaze sayo fukete furusato samuku koromo utsu nari
- English Translation
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From fair Yoshino
the autumn wind on the hills
as the night grows late—
cold in the old village now,
someone beats robes, I can hear
- Meaning
- The autumn wind blows down from the mountains of Yoshino; as the night deepens, the old village grows cold, and I hear robes being beaten.
- Commentary
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Book Five Autumn Poems II 483
Headnote: "On the theme of fulling cloth."
This is the ninth poem of the fulling-block sequence. The autumn wind blows from the mountains of Yoshino, the night grows late, and in the cold old village the sound of beating robes is heard. According to the headnote, it was composed on the theme of fulling cloth.
The author was a son of Fujiwara no Yoritsune who rose to Consultant. Founder of the Asukai house and skilled at kemari football, he was one of the compilers of the Shinkokinshū.
The scene is late on an autumn night, in the old village at the foot of the Yoshino mountains, a poetic place in Yamato Province where a detached palace once stood.
The direct occasion was the theme of fulling cloth.
It takes as its source Sakanoue no Korenori's winter poem in the Kokinshū, "On fair Yoshino's hills the white snow must be piling; the old village grows ever colder." That poem infers snow on the mountains from the deepening cold of the village.
In the first line, "mi" is an honorific prefix for Yoshino; the line is taken directly from the source poem.
The second line, "yama no akikaze," replaces the source's "white snow on the hills" with "autumn wind," turning a winter poem into an autumn one.
In the third line, "sa" is a prefix: "as the night grows late."
The fourth line takes up the source's fourth line; "furusato" is an old village, here Yoshino.
In the last line, "nari" is the auxiliary of inference from sound, expressing the fulling blocks heard late at night. Where the source inferred the cold with "grows ever colder," this poem hears the sound of robes beaten in that cold—an allusive variation that shifts the season and imagery while keeping the source's structure to depict the chill of the old village. "Furusato" is the same word as in 481, but there it is a traveler's home, here a faded village of the old capital.
- Author
- Asukai Masatsune
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
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- That in my old home they are beating robes, perhaps the wild geese in flight cry out across the far sky telling it to one who roams
- Wild geese cry above, and the wind blows cold, so cold— my fine Chinese robe, longing for you, I can't wait— no night passes unbeaten
- A thousand times struck, the fulling block's sound breaks off the dream I was in— on sleeves of one lost in thought the dewdrops shatter and fall
- The night has grown late— near the ridge of the mountains the moon shining cold, in a village far away the sound of robes being struck