Yo ni furu wa kurushiki mono o maki no ya ni yasuku mo suguru hatsushigure kana

English Translation

To pass through this world
is a hard and bitter thing,
yet over my cedar roof
how lightly it goes by,
the first winter shower

Meaning

To pass one's days in this world is hard and bitter, yet how lightly the first winter shower passes over my roof of cedar boards!

Commentary

Book Six Winter Poems 590

Headnote: "A winter poem for the Poetry Contest in Fifteen Hundred Rounds."
This is the twenty-first poem of the winter-showers sequence. Though passing one's days in the world is hard, the first shower passes lightly over the roof of cedar boards, and the speaker measures her own life against it. According to the headnote, it was composed as a winter poem for the Poetry Contest in Fifteen Hundred Rounds.
The author, "Nijō-in no Sanuki," is Nijō-in no Sanuki. A daughter of Minamoto no Yorimasa, she served Emperor Nijō as a lady-in-waiting.
The scene is early winter with the first showers falling, and the place is inside a house roofed with cedar boards.
The direct occasion is a winter poem for the Poetry Contest in Fifteen Hundred Rounds held by Retired Emperor Go-Toba.
In later ages the renga master Sōgi drew on this poem in his verse "Yo ni furu mo sara ni shigure no yadori kana" (To pass through the world is, after all, a brief shelter from the showers), and Matsuo Bashō in turn answered it with "Yo ni furu mo sara ni Sōgi no yadori kana" (To pass through the world is, after all, a stay in Sōgi's shelter).

In the first line, "yo ni furu wa," "furu" carries both "passing one's days in the world" and the "falling" of the showers.
In the second line, "kurushiki mono o," "mono o" is a concessive conjunctive particle: "though it is hard."
The third line, "maki no ya ni," means "on the house roofed with cedar or cypress boards," the same words as the first line of the preceding poem.
The fourth line, "yasuku mo suguru," means "passes by so easily." It describes the showers falling briefly and moving on, set against the hardship of passing one's days in the world.
The last line, "hatsushigure kana," closes with the exclamatory particle "kana." Through the contrast within the same "furu"—showers fall and pass lightly, while a person's passage through the world is hard—the poem entrusts its lament over the speaker's lot to the showers. It shares its last line with 570 in this book; where that poem sang of a first shower with a heart, this one sings of a first shower passing by indifferent to human suffering. Following the preceding poem's showers over leaves piled on a cedar roof, it takes the same cedar-roofed house as its stage and turns its eye to the lightness with which the showers pass.

Author

Nijoin no Sanuki

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other