Ika ni shite nonaka no matsu no furinuramu mukashi no hito no hikazu ya arikemu

いかにして野中の松の古りぬらむ
昔の人の引かずやありけむ

Roma-ji: Ika ni shite nonaka no matsu no furinuramu mukashi no hito no hikazu ya arikemu
English Translation: How could it have grown
so very old, this pine tree
in the open field?
Did the people of the past
not pull it up on their day?
Meaning: How has this pine in the middle of the field grown so old? Perhaps the people of long ago never pulled it up on the Day of the Rat.
Commentary: Spring Poems 9

Headnote: "The Day of the Rat"
On the topic of the Day of the Rat, the poet sees an ancient pine standing in the open field and wonders whether it survived because people long ago left it unpulled on that festival day. Drawing on the custom of pulling up young pines on the first Day of the Rat of the new year to wish for long life, this witty poem evokes the long years of a tree that escaped being pulled.
In the Ruijū text it is placed among the miscellaneous poems. Some characters in the third and fourth lines of the base text are hard to read, so the common readings furinuramu and mukashi no hito no have been adopted.

Line 1, ika ni shite ("how could it"), means "how" or "why" and, together with ramu in line 3, seeks a cause.
Line 2 points to a lone pine standing in the open field.
Line 3: ramu conjectures a cause, asking why it has grown so old; the poem pauses here.
Line 4, "the people of the past," refers to those who once held the Day of the Rat outings.
Line 5: the interrogative particle ya and the attributive form of the past conjectural kemu form a kakarimusubi. Based on the custom of pulling young pines, the poet guesses that this tree became an old pine because it was never pulled.
Author: Minamoto no Sanetomo
Source: Kinkaishu
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