Asakura ya ki no marodono ni waga oreba nanori o shitsutsu yuku wa ta ga ko zo - Shin Kokin Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

朝倉や木の丸殿に我が居れば
名のりをしつつ行くは誰が子ぞ

Roma-ji: Asakura ya ki no marodono ni waga oreba nanori o shitsutsu yuku wa ta ga ko zo
English Translation: At Asakura,
in the palace of rough logs
where I now abide,
calling out their names they pass—
whose children might they be?
Meaning: At Asakura, as I stay in the palace of rough-hewn logs, who might they be, those who pass calling out their names?
Commentary: Book Seventeen Miscellaneous Poems II 1689

Headnote: none in the original.
This is the second poem of the closing sequence of old poems and the closing poem of Book Seventeen. As the emperor stays in the log palace at Asakura, he asks whose child it is who passes by calling out his name. The original gives no headnote and records nothing of the circumstances.
The author, "Tenji Tennō Onuta," means a poem by Emperor Tenji. A son of Emperor Jomei, he advanced the Taika Reforms as Prince Naka no Ōe and ascended the throne at the Ōtsu Palace in Ōmi.
Asakura is in Chikuzen Province, in present-day Asakura, Fukuoka Prefecture. Empress Saimei went down to Tsukushi to aid Paekche and died at the palace of Asakura. The log palace was a rough hall built of unhewn logs.
Book Seventeen opens with a poem by Prince Kawashima, a son of Emperor Tenji, and ends with a poem by his father, Emperor Tenji. It sets two old Man'yōshū poems at its head and two old poems, by Hitomaro and Emperor Tenji, at its close, framing the book with old poems at both ends.

The first line, "Asakura ya," names the land of Asakura in Chikuzen. "Ya" is an exclamatory interjectory particle that strongly marks the place.
The second line, "ki no marodono ni," means "in the palace of unhewn logs."
The third line, "waga oreba," means "as I stay here." The realis form with "ba" expresses a settled condition.
The fourth line, "nanori o shitsutsu," means "announcing their names," describing those who pass before the palace declaring who they are.
The last line, "yuku wa ta ga ko zo," means "whose child is it that passes?" It closes with a question marked by "zo." Answering the poem of Prince Kawashima in 1588 at the head of the book, it closes Book Seventeen with the old poems of father and son.
Author: Emperor Tenji
Source: Shin Kokin Wakashu
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