娘子らが続麻懸くといふ鹿背の山
時しゆければ都となりぬ
時しゆければ都となりぬ
- Roma-ji
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Otomera ga umio kaku to iu kase no yama toki shi yukeba miyako to narinu
- English Translation
-
Where maidens, they say,
hang the flax thread they have spun—
Kase Mountain here,
as the times have passed along,
has now become the capital
- Meaning
- Kase Mountain, whose name recalls the reel where maidens hang the flax thread they have spun, has become the capital now that the times have changed.
- Commentary
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Book Six Miscellaneous Poems 1056
Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Five envoys"
The poem says that Kase Mountain, sharing its name with the reel on which maidens hang their spun flax, has become the capital as the times have changed. The long poem immediately before it (1053) is the second of the two "poems in praise of the new capital at Kuni"; it praises the palace of Futagi with scenes of wooded mountains, the pure sound of the rushing shallows, the bush warbler of spring and the stag of autumn, and closes with "the great palace site that shall not change even for a hundred ages." This is the third of its five envoys, taking up Mount Kase beside the palace, which the long poem describes with "between the slopes of Mount Kase, raising the palace pillars stout." It expresses the surprise and joy of seeing a rustic mountain village transformed into a capital.
Mount Kase is a mountain on the south bank of the Izumi River, in what is now Kizugawa City, Kyoto Prefecture.
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.
This poem's "has now become the capital" reverses the phrase "now it is an ancient capital" in 1048, which laments the ruin of Nara, so that while Nara becomes an old capital, the land around Kase Mountain becomes a new one. The next poem, 1057, also sings of "Kase Mountain," so the two poems take up the same mountain.
The first line, "Where maidens, they say," opens with the daily work of women spinning thread.
The second line, "hang the flax thread they have spun," means "on which, they say, they hang spun flax." Everything up to here is a preface leading into "Kase," a homophone of "kase," the reel on which thread is hung and wound.
The third line, "Kase Mountain here," names the mountain beside the Kuni capital, presenting the subject of the poem with a noun.
The fourth line, "as the times have passed along," means "because time has moved on." "Shi" is an emphatic particle that stresses the passage of time.
The final line, "has now become the capital," uses "nu," the perfective auxiliary, and impresses in a brief declaration the transformation of a mountain village into a capital.
- Author
- Tanabe no Sakimaro
- Source
- Manyoshu
- Prev Poem
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Futagiyama yamanami mireba momoyo ni mo kawaru mashijiki ōmiyadokoro
- Next Poem
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Kase no yama kodachi o shigemi asa sarazu kinaki toyomosu uguisu no koe