Tago no ura yu uchiidete mireba mashiro ni zo Fuji no takane ni yuki wa furikeru

田子の浦ゆうち出でて見れば真白にぞ
富士の高嶺に雪は降りける

Roma-ji: Tago no ura yu uchiidete mireba mashiro ni zo Fuji no takane ni yuki wa furikeru
English Translation: By Tago's shore,
as I come out and look up,
pure white, how it gleams—
upon Fuji's lofty peak
the snow has fallen deep.
Meaning: Coming out past the bay of Tago and looking up, I see it—pure white, the snow has fallen on Fuji's lofty peak.
Commentary: Book Three Miscellaneous Poems 318

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "A poem with tanka by Yamabe no Sukune Akahito on gazing at Mount Fuji" — "Envoy"
This envoy to a long poem on beholding Mount Fuji is famed as one of the finest landscape poems of the Man'yōshū. The instant he comes out past the bay of Tago onto the open shore, the lofty peak of Fuji, crowned with pure white snow, rises before him; his wonder and emotion are rendered grandly in plain words. The poem was taken into the Shin Kokinshū in the form "By Tago's shore, as I come out and look, on Fuji's lofty peak, white as mulberry cloth, the snow keeps falling," and is also included in the Hyakunin Isshu.
The poet, Yamabe no Akahito, was a court poet of the reign of Shōmu who composed many poems on royal excursions and excelled in clear, limpid landscape verse. Later ages ranked him with Kakinomoto no Hitomaro as a "Saint of Poetry."

First line "By Tago's shore": Tago is a shore of Suruga Bay, and yu marks the route—"by way of Tago." The line has one syllable too many.
Second line "as I come out and look up": uchiizu means to come out where the view opens; the line has one syllable too many.
Third line "pure white, how it gleams": zo is an emphatic binding particle concluded by the attributive keru at the end.
Fourth line "upon Fuji's lofty peak": takane is a high summit.
Fifth line "the snow has fallen deep": keru, the attributive of keri, expresses the thrill of discovery, answering zo. In the Shin Kokinshū version the ending becomes "keeps falling," turning it into snow falling at that very moment.
Author: Yamabe no Akahito
Source: Manyoshu
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