Sasa no ha wa miyama mo saya ni uchisoyogi kōreru shimo o fuku arashi kana

English Translation

The bamboo grass leaves
rustle till the deep mountains
ring with the sound,
and over the frozen frost
the storm wind blows

Meaning

The leaves of the bamboo grass rustle until the whole of the deep mountains rings, as the storm wind blows across the frost frozen upon them.

Commentary

Book Six Winter Poems 615

Headnote: "When I presented a hundred-poem sequence."
This is the fifth poem of the frost-and-withering sequence. The leaves of the bamboo grass rustle until the whole of the deep mountains rings, and the storm wind blows over the frost frozen upon them. According to the headnote, it was composed when a hundred-poem sequence was presented.
The author, "the Regent and Chancellor," is Fujiwara no Yoshitsune. A son of the Regent Kujō Kanezane, he rose to Regent and Chancellor and wrote the Japanese preface to the Shin Kokin Wakashū.
The scene is winter with the frost frozen hard, and the place is deep mountains thick with bamboo grass.
The direct occasion is the presentation of a hundred-poem sequence. The headnote does not record for which gathering the hundred poems were composed.
The foundation poem is Kakinomoto no Hitomaro's poem in Book Two of the Man'yōshū: "Sasa no ha wa miyama mo saya ni sayagedomo ware wa imo omou wakarekinureba" (Though the bamboo grass leaves rustle through the deep mountains, I think only of my wife, for I have come away from her). The next poem, 616, uses the same poem as its foundation.

The first line, "sasa no ha wa," takes the first line of the foundation poem as it stands.
The second line, "miyama mo saya ni," means "until the whole of the deep mountains rings with rustling," taking the second line of the foundation poem as it stands. "Mi" is an honorific prefix.
The third line, "uchisoyogi," means "swaying and rustling," with "uchi" as a prefix that smooths the rhythm. In place of the foundation poem's "sayagedomo," a swaying motion is set.
The fourth line, "kōreru shimo o," means "the frost frozen on the leaves," with "ru" as the attributive form of the auxiliary of continuance "ri."
The last line, "fuku arashi kana," closes with the exclamatory particle "kana." Using the upper verse of the foundation poem almost unchanged, the poem leaves aside its longing for a wife left behind and turns instead to the winter scene of storm wind blowing over frost frozen on bamboo grass. Following the storms on every side in the preceding poem, storm poems continue, and the next poem, 616, keeps the foundation poem's love and sings of sleeping alone on a frosty night, so that two poems, one of landscape and one of love, are set side by side from the same foundation poem.

Author

Fujiwara no Yoshitsune

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other