Asanagi ni kaji no oto kikoyu miketsukuni nojima no ama no fune ni shi aru rashi

朝なぎに楫の音聞こゆ御食つ国
野島の海人の舟にしあるらし

Roma-ji: Asanagi ni kaji no oto kikoyu miketsukuni nojima no ama no fune ni shi aru rashi
English Translation: In the morning calm
I hear the sound of oars—
from the land that feeds the court,
of the fishers of Nojima
it must be their boats
Meaning: In the morning calm I hear the sound of oars: it must be the boats of the fishers of Nojima, in the land that supplies the sovereign's table.
Commentary: Book Six Miscellaneous Poems 934

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "One envoy"
This poem reasons that the sound of oars carried over the calm morning sea must come from the boats of the fishers of Nojima in Awaji, a land that offers the bounty of the sea for the sovereign's table. From the sound of the oars, the poet imagines the fishers setting out to serve the emperor, and so praises his reign.
The long poem immediately before (933) is titled "A poem composed by Yamabe no Sukune Akahito," and praises as awe-inspiring the sight of the sovereign ruling the land from the palace at Naniwa, lasting like heaven and earth, sun and moon, while the fishers of Nojima in Awaji, a land that supplies the imperial table, dive for abalone pearls on the sea floor and serve him with their boats lined up. The headnote gives no date, but the poem is placed within the group of poems from the Naniwa progress.
Nojima is thought to lie in the northwest of Awaji Island, around present-day Nojima in Awaji City, Hyōgo Prefecture. The poem captures through sound the fishers' boats across the sea viewed from the palace at Naniwa.
The poet, Yamabe no Akahito, was a court poet of the early Nara period who accompanied imperial progresses, chiefly in the reign of Emperor Shōmu, and left many poems. His rank and career are unknown, but he excelled in lucid poems of landscape, and the Japanese preface to the Kokin Wakashū names him alongside Kakinomoto no Hitomaro.

The phrase "the sound of oars" in this poem is the same as the final line of 930 in this book, and both infer the fishers' boats from the sound of oars. Where 930 voices the feelings of a traveller listening from a lodging, this poem pictures, on the calm morning sea, the fishers' boats setting out to serve the sovereign, so the two differ in mood within the same group of Naniwa poems.
The first line, "In the morning calm," means at the time when the morning wind has fallen and the sea is quiet.
The second line, "I hear the sound of oars," ends a sentence, making this a poem with a pause after the second line. The sound is given first, and the lower verse infers its source.
The third line, "from the land that feeds the court," means a province that offers seafood and other food for the sovereign's table; here it refers to Awaji and modifies "Nojima" that follows.
The fourth line, "of the fishers of Nojima," means the fisherfolk living at Nojima in Awaji, and takes up "the fishers of Nojima in Awaji" in the long poem.
The final line, "it must be their boats," uses the emphatic particle "shi" and "rashi," an auxiliary of inference based on evidence. The inference rests on the sound of oars in the second line.
Author: Yamabe no Akahito
Source: Manyoshu
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