Atarashiki toshi no hajime ni kaku shi koso chitose o kanete tanoshiki o tsume - Kokin Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

新しき年の始めにかくしこそ
千年をかねて楽しきを積め

Roma-ji: Atarashiki toshi no hajime ni kaku shi koso chitose o kanete tanoshiki o tsume
English Translation: At the beginning
of the new year, just like this,
let us, foreseeing
a thousand years yet to come,
heap up our joys, one on one.
Meaning: At the start of the new year, in just this way, looking ahead a thousand years, let joy upon joy be heaped up.
Commentary: Book Twenty Poems of the Bureau of Court Song 1069

Headnote: "Court Songs of the Bureau: Song of Ōnaobi"
A New Year blessing song: at the start of the new year, the singers call for joy to be heaped up with a thousand years in view. Said to be the Ōnaobi song performed at the New Year banquet, it is a bright song of celebration fitting for the opening of the final book of the Kokin Wakashū. No author is recorded.
The Ōutadokoro, or Bureau of Court Song, was the office that taught and preserved the ōuta, the songs performed at palace banquets and Shinto rites. Book Twenty of the Kokin Wakashū gathers such songs, arranged as court songs of the Bureau, songs of the kagura, and songs of the East.
A note attached to the headnote says that in the Nihongi, understood as the Shoku Nihongi, the lower lines read "so shall we serve, until ten thousand ages." This corresponds to the song sung at the banquet of the first month of Tenpyō 14 recorded there. It also shares, with Ōtomo no Yakamochi's poem that closes the Man'yōshū, "At the start of the new year, in early spring, may good things pile up like the snow falling today," the wish that blessings accumulate at the turn of the year.

The first line, "new," marks the year that has just turned and opens the song of celebration.
The second line, "at the start of the year," names the very first moment of the New Year. The book begins with this New Year song and hands the blessing on to "though ten thousand ages pass" in 1100 at its close, so that the opening and the ending answer each other.
The third line, "just so," adds the emphatic shi and the binding particle koso to kaku, pointing firmly to the celebration at hand. Koso is resolved by tsume in the last line. The line does not end a clause but flows on.
The fourth line, "looking ahead a thousand years," means foreseeing a thousand years to come. It echoes "already seen, your thousand years" in 1086 of this book, sharing the words kanete and chitose.
The last line, "heap up joys," means to pile up pleasures. Tsume resolves koso; its perfective and imperative forms coincide, so the line rings as a call to those at the banquet.
Source: Kokin Wakashu
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