今よりは涼しくなりぬひぐらしの
鳴く山陰の秋の夕風
鳴く山陰の秋の夕風
- Roma-ji
-
Ima yori wa suzushiku narinu higurashi no naku yamakage no aki no yūkaze
- English Translation
-
From this moment on
it has grown so cool at last—
where the evening cicadas
sing in shadows of the hills,
the autumn evening wind.
- Meaning
- From now on it has turned cool—in the mountain shade where the evening cicadas sing, the autumn evening wind blows.
- Commentary
-
Autumn Poems 188
Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "White dew"
In the mountain shade where the evening cicadas sing, the autumn evening wind blows, and the poet feels that from now on it has turned cool. Through the cicadas' voices and the evening breeze, sound and touch, he captures the certain shift of the season to autumn.
This poem was included in the Shokukokin Wakashū. Kamo no Mabuchi marked it with a circle. The Ruijū text, noting that its headnote is missing, places it among "poems found in another manuscript and in printed editions."
Line 1, "from this moment on," marks the boundary of the seasons.
Line 2: nu marks completion, "it has turned cool," and the poem pauses here.
Line 3, higurashi, is a cicada that sings at dusk in late summer and early autumn, leading on to the "mountain cicadas" of the next poem, 189.
Line 4 means "in the mountain shade where they sing."
Line 5 ends on a noun. Following the "first wind of autumn" that blew at morning and evening in the opening three poems, the wind is sung again here as the "autumn evening wind."
- Author
- Minamoto no Sanetomo
- Source
- Kinkaishu
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