Mikanohara futagi no nobe o kiyomi koso ōmiyadokoro sadamekerashi mo

三香の原布当の野辺を清みこそ
大宮所定めけらしも

Roma-ji: Mikanohara futagi no nobe o kiyomi koso ōmiyadokoro sadamekerashi mo
English Translation: On Mika's plain,
the fields of Futagi
are so pure and clear:
it is for this the great palace
was set here, it seems to me
Meaning: It is because the fields of Futagi on the plain of Mika are so pure that this, it seems, was chosen as the site of the great palace.
Commentary: Book Six Miscellaneous Poems 1051

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Two envoys"
The poem says that it must be because the fields of Futagi on the plain of Mika are so pure that the emperor chose this place as the site of his palace. The long poem immediately before it (1050) is the first of two "poems in praise of the new capital at Kuni"; it praises the palace of Futagi, raised with stout pillars near Mount Kase, together with the pure sound of the river shallows and the birdsong of the mountains, and closes with "it seems he decided that the palace should be here." Taking up that close, this envoy praises again that the purity of the land is the very reason it was chosen as the seat of the capital.
The Kuni capital was established by Emperor Shōmu in Yamashiro Province at the end of Tenpyō 12 (740), and the site of its palace lies in what is now Kamo-chō, Kizugawa City, Kyoto Prefecture. Mika-no-hara is the plain of that area, and Futagi is the name of the land around the palace.
The twenty-one poems from 1047 through 1067, the last poem of the book, are covered by the closing left note: "The above twenty-one poems appear in the Tanabe no Sakimaro Collection." According to this note they were taken from the Tanabe no Sakimaro Collection, and they are thought to be Sakimaro's own compositions.
The poet, Tanabe no Sakimaro, was a poet of the mid-Nara period; in Tenpyō 20 (748) he served as a clerk of the Office of Sake Brewing and acted as an envoy for the Minister of the Left, Tachibana no Moroe. He is regarded as one of the representative poets of the last phase of the Man'yōshū, carrying on the tradition of ceremonial long poems at court.
In the original text, a note of a variant, "one version says: marking it with ropes as this place," follows the fourth line, showing that a tradition existed in which the fourth line read "marking it with ropes as this place." Since this note is not part of the poem itself it has been removed, and here the main text's "the great palace" is adopted.

The final line's "sadamekerashi mo" is the same expression as the close of Kasa no Kanamura's Yoshino poem at the opening of the book (907), "surely it was ordained so from the age of the gods," and both praise the land's purity as the reason the site of the palace was chosen. A book that began by praising the Yoshino detached palace thus praises a new capital in the same pattern near its end. A later envoy lamenting the ruins of the Kuni capital (1060) also opens with "On Mika's plain," showing a reversal from praise to ruin.
The first line, "On Mika's plain," names the plain where the Kuni capital stood, opening the poem with the place name of the capital.
The second line, "the fields of Futagi," narrows the focus to the area where the palace stood.
The third line, "are so pure and clear," means "it is because they are pure." "Kiyomi" is the -mi construction of "kiyoshi" expressing a reason, and the particle "koso" emphasizes that reason, corresponding to "-kerashi" in the final line.
The fourth line, "it is for this the great palace," contains "ōmiyadokoro," the place where the emperor's palace stands, the site of the capital. The word takes up "the palace here" in the long poem, and it is also placed in the final line of the next poem, 1052.
The final line, "was set here, it seems to me," means "it seems he decided so." "-Kerashi" is an auxiliary that infers a past event from evidence; it forms the conclusion answering "koso" in the third line, and "mo" adds an exclamatory note.
Author: Tanabe no Sakimaro
Source: Manyoshu
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