竜田姫今はのころの秋風に
時雨を急ぐ人の袖かな
時雨を急ぐ人の袖かな
- Roma-ji
-
Tatsutahime imawa no koro no akikaze ni shigure o isogu hito no sode kana
- English Translation
-
Tatsuta, goddess—
in the autumn wind that blows
at your parting hour
sleeves of people hurry on
ahead of the winter rains
- Meaning
- In the autumn wind blowing at the hour of the goddess Tatsuta's parting, people's sleeves are wet with tears even before the winter showers come.
- Commentary
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Book Five Autumn Poems II 544
Headnote: "When I held a hundred-poem contest at my house."
This is the twenty-second poem of the autumn-leaves sequence. In the autumn wind at the hour of the goddess Tatsuta's parting, people's sleeves are wet with tears ahead of the winter showers. According to the headnote, it was composed for the hundred-poem contest the author held at his residence.
The author was a son of Kujō Kanezane who rose to Regent and Chancellor and was called Go-Kyōgoku-dono. He wrote the kana preface of the Shinkokinshū.
The scene is the very end of autumn with winter showers approaching, where the autumn wind blows. Tatsutahime is the goddess of autumn, a deification of Mount Tatsuta, said to dye the trees red.
The direct occasion was the hundred-poem contest Fujiwara no Yoshitsune held at his residence while Major Captain of the Left, known as the Poetry Contest in Six Hundred Rounds.
The first line, "Tatsutahime," is the goddess of autumn, said to dye the leaves red.
In the second line, "imawa" is the moment of parting or ending, here the moment the goddess departs with autumn.
The third line means "in the autumn wind" that blows at the season's close.
The fourth line, "shigure o isogu," means hastening ahead without waiting for the season of winter showers—tears falling before the showers do.
In the last line, "kana" is exclamatory. Grieving the departure of autumn's goddess, people's sleeves grow wet with tears sooner than the showers fall, captured with the personifying "hasten." It calls up Mount Tatsuta, sung of in 527 and 530, as the goddess's name, and turns the pairing of showers and autumn leaves in 525 through 527 into tears of parting at autumn's end.
- Author
- Fujiwara no Yoshitsune
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
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- 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
- The autumn leaves meant to be keepsakes of the fall as it slips away— will they by tomorrow fall mingled with the winter rain?
- When we went in throngs seeking out the scattering leaves of autumn red, it was by the mountain path that the autumn went away