Aki fukaki nezame ni ikaga omoiizuru hakanaku mieshi haru no yo no yume

English Translation

In the waking hours
of deep autumn, how is it
that you call to mind
the dream that seemed so fleeting
of that night in spring?

Meaning

Waking in the night as autumn deepens, how do you call to mind that dream of a spring night which seemed so fleeting?

Commentary

Book Eight Lament Poems 790

Headnote: "Sent to the Tsuchimikado Palace Minister when he was a Middle Captain, in the autumn of the year the Koga Palace Minister died around spring."
This is the sixteenth poem of the sequence remembering the dead through the things of autumn, and the opening poem of an exchange. It asks how, waking in the night in deep autumn, he calls to mind the dream of a spring night that seemed so fleeting. According to the headnote, it was sent in the autumn of the year the Koga Palace Minister died in spring, to his son the Tsuchimikado Palace Minister, who was then still a Middle Captain.
A daughter of Fujiwara no Nobunari, the author was a lady-in-waiting and poet who served Inpumon'in, Princess Ryōshi, daughter of Emperor Go-Shirakawa. The "Koga Palace Minister" is Minamoto no Masamichi, who rose to Palace Minister. The "Tsuchimikado Palace Minister" is Masamichi's son Minamoto no Michichika, who later rose to Palace Minister and held great weight as a close retainer of Retired Emperor Go-Toba.
The scene is autumn in the year Masamichi died, and the place is not recorded.
The direct occasion is consoling Michichika, who had lost his father.

The first line, "aki fukaki," means "as autumn deepens," and modifies "nezame," waking in the night, in the second line.
In the second line, "nezame ni ikaga," "ikaga" is an interrogative word meaning "how," completed by the attributive "omoiizuru" in the third line.
The third line, "omoiizuru," means "do you call to mind?" The poem pauses after the third line, and through inversion, what is called to mind is placed in the lower verse.
The fourth line, "hakanaku mieshi," means "that seemed so fleeting." "Shi" marks the past, looking back on what happened in spring.
The last line, "haru no yo no yume," ends on a noun. It likens Masamichi, who died in spring, to a short and fleeting dream of a spring night. "Aki" in the first line and "haru" in the last form a pair, composing a picture in which a parting by death in spring is recalled on waking in autumn. The next poem, 791, replies by taking up this "dream" and "waking in the night."

Author

Inpumon-in no Taifu

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other