春過ぎて夏来るらし白栲の
衣干したり天の香具山
衣干したり天の香具山
- Roma-ji
-
Haru sugite natsu kitaru rashi shirotae no koromo hoshitari ame no kaguyama
- English Translation
-
Spring has passed away,
and summer, it seems, has come;
robes of snowy white
have been hung out there to dry
on heavenly Kagu Hill.
- Meaning
- Spring has passed, and summer seems to have come—for there on heavenly Mount Kagu, pure white robes are spread out to dry.
- Commentary
-
Book One Miscellaneous Poems 28
Headnote: "In the reign of the Sovereign who ruled from the Fujiwara Palace: a poem composed by the Empress"
Seeing pure white robes hung out to dry on Mount Kagu, the Empress senses that spring has passed and summer arrived. The vivid contrast of bright early-summer sun, fresh green hills, and gleaming white robes makes it a celebrated poem that captures the turning of the seasons in visible form.
Empress Jitō, whose personal name was Princess Uno no Sarara, was a daughter of Emperor Tenji and the consort of Emperor Tenmu. After Tenmu's death she took the throne, built the Fujiwara capital, and moved the court there.
The poem was later included in the Shin Kokin Wakashū in the form "Spring has passed, and summer seems to have come; on heavenly Kagu, they say, white robes are hung to dry," and, chosen for the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu, it has been widely loved.
The first line, "spring has passed," plainly opens on the change of season.
In the second line, the verb "to come" is read kitaru, and rashi is an auxiliary of inference from clear evidence: "summer seems to have come." The evidence is the white robes of the lines that follow, and the poem breaks here.
The third line, shirotae no, meaning cloth woven from paper-mulberry fibers, is a pillow word for "robes." Its pure white contrasts vividly with early-summer green.
In the fourth line, tari is continuative: "robes have been hung to dry." Since Mount Kagu was sacred, some think these were robes used in divine rites. The poem breaks here as well, in inversion with the last line.
The last line calls Mount Kagu, one of the three hills of Yamato, "heavenly," after the legend that it descended from the sky. Ending on a noun, it fixes the mountain's form in the mind. The "heavenly Kagu Hill" from which Emperor Jomei viewed the land in poem 2, near the head of this book, appears here as the mountain that announces the season, and the two poems echo each other.
- Author
- Empress Jito
- Source
- Manyoshu
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Yoki hito no yoshi to yoku mite yoshi to iishi yoshino yoku miyo yoki hito yoku mi
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Sasanami no shiga no karasaki sakiku aredo ōmiyabito no fune machikanetsu