飛鳥川紅葉葉流る葛城の
山の秋風吹きぞしくらし
山の秋風吹きぞしくらし
- Roma-ji
-
Asukagawa momijiba nagaru katsuragi no yama no akikaze fuki zo shikurashi
- English Translation
-
Down the Asuka
the crimson leaves flow along;
on Katsuragi
the mountain's autumn wind must
be blowing ceaselessly now
- Meaning
- Autumn leaves are flowing down the Asuka River; the autumn wind must be blowing hard and without cease on Mount Katsuragi.
- Commentary
-
Book Five Autumn Poems II 541
Headnote: "Topic unknown."
This is the nineteenth poem of the autumn-leaves sequence. Because autumn leaves are flowing down the Asuka River, the poet infers that the autumn wind must be blowing hard on Mount Katsuragi. The headnote gives no topic, and the circumstances of composition are not recorded.
The author was a poet who served at the courts of Empress Jitō and Emperor Monmu in the Asuka period.
The scene is late autumn as leaves fall, on the bank of the Asuka River, thinking toward Mount Katsuragi; both are poetic places.
The direct occasion is not recorded.
It is a variant of an anonymous poem in Book Ten of the Man'yōshū, "Asukagawa momijiba nagaru Katsuragi no yama no konoha wa ima shi chirurashi," differing in the fourth and last lines.
The first line names the Asuka River, where the leaves flow.
The second line, "momijiba nagaru," ends in the conclusive form, and the poem breaks here, presenting the real scene of leaves flowing on the river before the eyes.
The third line introduces the distant mountain from which the leaves have fallen.
The fourth line is the autumn wind blowing on Mount Katsuragi.
In the last line, "shiku" means to do repeatedly, "zo" is emphatic, and "rashi," an auxiliary of grounded inference, resolves it. From the leaves flowing on the river, the poet infers the force of the unseen mountain wind—like 530 and 532, a poem reasoning from leaves on the water to the wind on the mountain. It shares the inferential "rashi" especially with "a storm must be blowing" in 532. The next poem, 542, sets the same Asuka River and Mount Katsuragi but replaces the autumn wind with the withering winter wind.
- Author
- Kakinomoto no Hitomaro
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- On Katano's moor where quail cry, a wax tree stands in its autumn red— as if to strip it bare now the autumn wind is blowing
- The scattering leaves of crimson have a hue that runs so deep, and yet cross it, and the water clouds, the stream flowing through the hills
- On the Asuka, in each rapid, waves wash up crimson—it must be from Mount Katsuragi's peak the wintry wind has borne them
- The autumn leaves there— surely the storm sweeps them off, as its name would say; here too at the mountain's foot they fall as though they were rain