Toki shimo are fuyu wa hamori no kannazuki mabara ni narinu mori no kashiwagi

English Translation

Of all times, just now,
winter brings the Godless Month
when the leaf-guard god is gone;
thin and sparse the oaks have grown
standing in the grove

Meaning

Of all times, winter brings the Godless Month, when even the god who guards the leaves is away—and so the oaks in the grove have grown thin and bare.

Commentary

Book Six Winter Poems 568

Headnote: "Topic unknown."
This is the sixteenth poem of the falling-leaves sequence. Because winter brings the Godless Month, when the god who guards the leaves is gone, the oaks in the grove have grown sparse. The headnote gives no topic, and the circumstances of composition are not recorded.
The author, "Hōgen Keisan," is Keisan. "Hōgen" is a clerical rank second only to Hōin, and Keisan was a monk who held that rank.
The scene is the Godless Month, and the place is a grove where oaks stand.
The direct occasion is not recorded.
The belief that a leaf-guarding god dwells in the oak was long known, as The Pillow Book remarks of the oak that it is awe-inspiring to think the leaf-guarding god resides there.

The first line, "toki shimo are," means "of all times," "just at this moment."
In the second line, "fuyu wa hamori no," "hamori" is the god who guards the leaves of trees. The oak was held to be the dwelling of this leaf-guarding god.
The third line, "kannazuki," is the Godless Month, the tenth lunar month, and works as a pivot word in which the "god" of "the leaf-guarding god" overlaps with "the Godless Month." The reasoning that this is the month when the god who guards the leaves is absent is compressed into a single word. Poem 552 in this book likewise places "Kannazuki" in its first line and sings of scattering leaves.
The fourth line, "mabara ni narinu," means "has grown sparse," as the leaves fall and the branches thin, with "nu" as a perfective auxiliary. The poem breaks after the fourth line, in inverted relation to the last line.
The last line, "mori no kashiwagi," closes on a noun, naming only at the end what has grown sparse. "Hamori" and "mori" repeat the same sound. Against the common notion that the gods are absent in the Godless Month, the poem turns a reasoned argument: since even the god who guards the leaves is away, it is only natural that the leaves should fall.

Author

Keisan

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other