Kyō goto ni kyō ya kagiri to oshimedomo mata mo kotoshi ni ainikeru kana

English Translation

Each year on this day
I grieved, thinking it might be
the last I would see—
yet here again I have met
the ending of another year

Meaning

Every year on this day I have grieved, thinking it might be my last—and yet here I am, meeting the close of another year once more.

Commentary

Book Six Winter Poems 706

Headnote: "For the Poetry Contest in Fifteen Hundred Rounds."
This is the sixteenth poem of the year's-end sequence and the closing poem of Winter Poems. Each year on the last day the speaker has grieved, thinking it might be his last, yet here he has met the end of another year once more. According to the headnote, it was composed for the Poetry Contest in Fifteen Hundred Rounds.
The author, "Master of the Empress Dowager's Household Toshinari," is Fujiwara no Shunzei. A son of the Provisional Middle Counselor Fujiwara no Toshitada, he rose to Senior Third Rank and Master of the Empress Dowager's Household, and took the Buddhist name Shakua when he entered holy orders. He compiled the Senzai Wakashū and was the father of Fujiwara no Teika.
The scene is the last day of the year, and no place is specified.
The direct occasion is the Poetry Contest in Fifteen Hundred Rounds, for which Retired Emperor Go-Toba commissioned hundred-poem sequences from poets in Kennin 1 (1201) and matched them in rounds.

The first line, "kyō goto ni," means "each year on this day," the last day of the year.
The second line, "kyō ya kagiri to," means "thinking this day might be the last," with "ya" as an interrogative particle. It shows a heart that overlays the last day of the year with the limit of its own life.
The third line, "oshimedomo," means "though I grieved," with "domo" as a concessive conjunctive particle.
The fourth line, "mata mo kotoshi ni," means "yet again, this year's end."
The last line, "ainikeru kana," means "I have met it," with "ni" perfective, "keru" the attributive form of the exclamatory auxiliary "keri," and "kana" an exclamatory particle. Thinking each year that this year might be the last, the speaker has lived on to meet the year's end again, and the poem sings of the feeling of an aged body and a quiet wonder at still being alive. Set at the close of Winter Poems, it answers the opening poem, 551, from the same Poetry Contest in Fifteen Hundred Rounds: there, grief at parting from autumn brought the knowledge that winter had come; here, grief at parting from the year brings winter to its end, so that the beginning and end of the book answer each other through the heart that grieves at parting. The year's-end sequence that began with 691 in this book is closed by this poem as well.

Author

Fujiwara no Shunzei

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other