Akebono ya kawase no nami no takasebune kudasu ka hito no sode no akigiri

English Translation

Ah, the break of day—
on the river's rising waves
a shallow-draft boat—
is someone taking it down?
sleeves glimpsed in the autumn mist

Meaning

At daybreak, is someone steering a flat-bottomed boat down over the waves of the shallows? Their sleeves show faintly through the autumn mist.

Commentary

Book Five Autumn Poems II 493

Headnote: "On the topic 'river mist.'"
This is the third poem of the mist sequence. At daybreak, a flat-bottomed boat seems to be going down the rapids, and the boatman's sleeves show faintly through the autumn mist. According to the headnote, it was composed on the topic "river mist."
The author was a son of Palace Minister Minamoto no Michichika who later rose to Chancellor.
The scene is an autumn daybreak, on river shallows shrouded in mist.
The direct occasion was the topic "river mist."

In the first line, "ya" is an exclamatory particle calling up the hour of dawn and setting the scene. Following the clouded morning of 492, this too is a morning mist.
The second line means "the waves of the river shallows," and from the "height" (taka) of those waves it leads into "takasebune" in the third line.
The third line, "takasebune," is a flat-bottomed boat for shallow water. It is linked by wordplay to the "height" of the waves in the second line, and is left in kana.
In the fourth line, the interrogative "ka" guesses whether someone is taking the boat downstream; the figure is hidden in mist and uncertain.
The last line ends on a noun, showing the boatman's sleeves glimpsed in the autumn mist; the presence of a boat descending a mist-wrapped river is caught only through sleeves appearing and vanishing. The next poem, 494, also sings of river mist at Uji; this poem looks at a boat within the mist below, that one at a mountain visible above it, forming a pair of low and high. Poem 495 says the mist hides even the sleeves of distant people, reversing this poem's sleeves seen through mist.

Author

Minamoto no Michiteru

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other