時雨の雨間なくし降れば真木の葉も
争ひかねて色づきにけり
争ひかねて色づきにけり
- Roma-ji
-
Shigure no ame ma naku shi fureba maki no ha mo arasoikanete irozukinikeri
- English Translation
-
Winter showers' rain
falls on without a pause,
and even the leaves of the maki,
unable to hold out,
have taken on their color
- Meaning
- Because the rain of the winter showers falls without pause, even the leaves of the fine maki trees could not hold out, and have taken on color.
- Commentary
-
Book Six Winter Poems 582
Headnote: "Topic unknown."
This is the thirteenth poem of the winter-showers sequence. Because the showers fall without pause, even the leaves of the fine maki trees could not hold out and have taken on color. The headnote gives no topic, and the circumstances of composition are not recorded.
The author, "Hitomaro," is Kakinomoto no Hitomaro. A Man'yō poet who served at the courts of Empress Jitō and Emperor Monmu, he was revered in later ages as the Sage of Poetry and is one of the Thirty-Six Poetic Immortals.
The scene is a time of continuing winter showers, and the place is where the maki trees stand.
The direct occasion is not recorded.
This poem was collected without an author's name in Book Ten of the Man'yōshū and is taken in the Shin Kokin Wakashū as a work of Hitomaro. The preceding poem, 581, uses this poem as its foundation poem.
The first line, "shigure no ame," means "the rain that is the winter showers" and runs to six syllables, one over the count. It repeats the first line of 577 in this book.
In the second line, "ma naku shi fureba," "shi" is an emphatic adverbial particle, giving "because it falls without pause." "Ba" attached to the perfective form expresses an established condition.
In the third line, "maki no ha mo," "maki" refers to fine timber trees such as cedar and cypress. "Mo" adds the sense "even the leaves of the maki, besides the other trees."
The fourth line, "arasoikanete," means "unable to resist." The showers and the leaves are personified as if they were contending.
The last line, "irozukinikeri," means "have taken on color," with "ni" perfective and "keri" exclamatory. Where the showers could not dye the lower leaves of the maki in 577 of this book, here the showers win and the leaves take on color, reversing the contest between showers and evergreen trees. Where the preceding poem by Retired Emperor Go-Toba took the words "ma naku" and "arasoikanete" to ask the fate of the sacred cedars, this foundation poem is placed to show the result: the leaves have already turned.
- Author
- Kakinomoto no Hitomaro
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
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- 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?
- Deep and dark their green— unable to hold out, what will become of them, the sacred cedars of Furu where the showers never cease?
- 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
- Of all times, just now, drifting clouds hang in the gaze of my long rains of brooding, and my sleeves become as one with them, wet with showers on and on