心とや紅葉はすらん立田山
松は時雨に濡れぬものかは
松は時雨に濡れぬものかは
- Roma-ji
-
Kokoro to ya momiji wa suran tatsutayama matsu wa shigure ni nurenu mono ka wa
- English Translation
-
Do they turn to red
of their own heart's will, the trees
on Mount Tatsuta?
Is it that the pines are not
wet by the autumn showers?
- Meaning
- Do the trees of Mount Tatsuta turn red of their own will? After all, are the pines not wet by the showers too?
- Commentary
-
Book Five Autumn Poems II 527
Headnote: "On autumn leaves, composed for a hundred-poem sequence at the house of the Lay Former Regent and Chancellor."
This is the fifth poem of the autumn-leaves sequence. Since pines are wet by showers too yet do not change color, the poet asks whether the trees of Mount Tatsuta turn red of their own will. According to the headnote, it was composed on autumn leaves for a hundred-poem sequence at the house of the Lay Former Regent and Chancellor Kujō Kanezane.
The author was a son of Fujiwara no Toshitada and father of Teika who served as Master of the Empress Dowager's Household and compiled the Senzaishū.
The scene is autumn with passing showers, on Mount Tatsuta, a poetic place in Yamato famed for autumn leaves.
The direct occasion was the topic "autumn leaves" in a hundred-poem sequence composed at Kujō Kanezane's house.
In the first line, "kokoro to" means "of its own heart," and the interrogative "ya" is bound to "ran" in the second line.
The second line means "do they turn red?" with "ran" the attributive of the conjectural "ramu." The poem breaks here.
The third line, "Tatsutayama," is the famed place of autumn leaves, set as the mountain of reddening trees.
In the fourth line, "wa" sets off the pine, which does not change color, against the reddening trees.
In the last line, "ka wa" is rhetorical: "are pines not wet by showers too? They are." Against the notion that showers redden leaves, the poem argues from the pine, which stays green though equally wet, that the trees must turn red of their own heart. Where 525 followed that notion in guessing that even ordinary hills color in the showers, this poem questions it. Mount Tatsuta appears again in 530.
- Author
- Fujiwara no Shunzei
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- The treetops that crown Kaminabi's Mimuro— how must they look now, when common hills everywhere are touched by passing showers?
- By Suzuka's stream through the deep fallen leaves, days have passed on my way— on the plain of Yamada I listen to the showers
- Free of brooding thoughts I would gaze upon these leaves of crimson autumn, were it not the foot of hills named for the storm that scatters
- In the setting sun by the hills of Saho, where the oak groves stand, fall leaves like a rain that comes down from a sky without a cloud