深緑争ひかねていかならん
間なく時雨のふるの神杉
間なく時雨のふるの神杉
- Roma-ji
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Fukamidori arasoikanete ika naran ma naku shigure no furu no kamisugi
- English Translation
-
Deep and dark their green—
unable to hold out,
what will become of them,
the sacred cedars of Furu
where the showers never cease?
- Meaning
- What will become of the deep green of the sacred cedars of Furu, unable to hold out against the winter showers that fall on them without pause?
- Commentary
-
Book Six Winter Poems 581
Headnote: "Among winter poems."
This is the twelfth poem of the winter-showers sequence. The speaker wonders what will become of the sacred cedars of Furu, where the showers fall without pause, and whether even their deep green can hold out against them. According to the headnote, it is one of a group of poems composed on winter.
The author, "the Retired Emperor," is Retired Emperor Go-Toba. A son of Emperor Takakura, he governed as retired emperor after abdicating, established the Bureau of Poetry, and commanded the compilation of the Shin Kokin Wakashū.
The scene is early winter with showers falling on and on, and the place is beside the sacred cedars at Furu in Isonokami, Yamato Province.
The direct occasion is not recorded beyond the headnote's "among winter poems."
The foundation poem is the next poem, 582, collected without an author's name in Book Ten of the Man'yōshū: "Shigure no ame ma naku shi fureba maki no ha mo arasoikanete irozukinikeri" (Because the winter showers fall without pause, even the leaves of the fine trees could not hold out and have taken on color). Taking the words "ma naku" and "arasoikanete" from it, this poem answers the foundation poem's reddened leaves by asking what will become of the evergreen sacred cedars.
The first line, "fukamidori," refers to the deep green of the cedars. Setting the color of the evergreen cedar first, it presents a color that ought never to change.
The second line, "arasoikanete," means "unable to resist," a phrase taken directly from the fourth line of the foundation poem. "Kane" adds the sense of trying and failing.
The third line, "ika naran," means "what will become of them?" with "n" as a conjectural auxiliary. The poem breaks after the third line, in inverted relation to the lower verse.
The fourth line, "ma naku shigure no," means "the showers without pause," taking up "ma naku shi fureba" from the second line of the foundation poem.
In the last line, "furu no kamisugi," "furu" carries both the "falling" of the showers and "Furu" in Isonokami, a poetic place in Yamato Province. Furu lies around the Isonokami Shrine in present-day Tenri, Nara Prefecture, and its god-dwelling cedars were often sung. The poem closes on a noun. Following the bamboo of 576 and the lower leaves of the maki of 577 in this book, sung as things the showers cannot dye, this poem asks whether even the evergreen sacred cedars might fail to hold out against the showers. In the next poem, the fine trees of the foundation poem have already given way and taken on color, so that the allusive poem and its foundation poem are placed side by side.
- Author
- Go-Toba In
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
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- In a brushwood hut where the gaps let in the sky, sleeping on a journey, wet with winter showers, my robe of the night
- Listen, winter showers— were there no sleeve of mine lost in brooding thought, once the leaves had gone, what would you have left to dye?
- Winter showers' rain falls on without a pause, and even the leaves of the maki, unable to hold out, have taken on their color
- In this world of ours still I linger on, like rain; the showers keep falling, and like the moon between the clouds I think, "Now let me go forth"—and yet