Hyakunin Isshu, Poem 6
Translation and comments by Ad Blankestijn
(version September 2022)
magpies spread
the bridge on which
frost dripped down -
when I see its whiteness,
how deep is the night!
kasasagi no
wataseru hashi ni
oku shimo no
shiroki wo mireba
yo zo fukenikeru
かささぎの
渡せる橋に
置く霜の
白きを見れば
夜ぞふけにける
かささぎの
渡せる橋に
置く霜の
白きを見れば
夜ぞふけにける
Otomo no Yakamochi 大伴家持 (718-785)
[Shinshinden Palace, Gosho, Kyoto -
showing the "Magpie Bridge,"
the stairs leading up to the palace]
showing the "Magpie Bridge,"
the stairs leading up to the palace]
A poem based on the well-known Tanabata legend, an important theme in Japanese (and Chinese) poetry. At the same time, a fantasy on a cold winter night, while the poet waits in vain for his beloved in the palace.
Modern research has shown that in the Heian-period, "Magpie's Bridge" referred to bridges or stairs leading up to palace buildings. So the poet is waiting for his beloved inside the palace grounds and sees the frost on the staircase that leads to her chambers while she keeps him waiting. It is however the question, whether this naming of palace staircases already existed in the Nara period when the poem was written.
Therefore the prevailing interpretation reads this poem in the light of the Tanabata legend of the Ox Herd (Hikoboshi) and Weaver Maid (Orihime), two constellations in the sky (Vega and Altair) and also lovers, who could only meet once a year, on the seventh day of the seventh month, when magpies would form a bridge across the River of Heaven with their wings so that they could cross (see my post on Tanabata). This is such a famous story that most critics since Teika have interpreted the poem as referring to this beautiful legend. The whole poem should then be seen as composed when the poet gazed at the stars in the winter sky which was filled with frost, which he then associated with a frost-covered magpie bridge in the heavens. The silent assumption is, that, like the Ox Herd, he was hoping for a rendezvous with his beloved, but that the night deepened without her coming.
In waka, magpies are often associated with "frost" (shimo) - the reason being the white spots on their black breasts and wingtips.
Notes
- oku shimo no: refers to the ripe that has fallen.
- yo zo fukenikeru: zo is an intensifier, and always followed by a verb in the rentaikei. -keru is a past tense or recollection suffix.
Tanabata
[The Cow Herd and the Weaver Maiden
by Tsukioka Hitoshi]
The legend of the Ox Herd and Weaver Maiden had already come from China (where it still exists as the Qixi Festival) in the Nara period (it was introduced under Empress Koken in 755) and was very popular in Yakamochi's time - one section in the Manyoshu contains the respectable number of 128 tanka and 5 choka dedicated to the legend! The Tanabata festival was made popular by Yamanoue no Okura, who had studied in China and wrote many Tanabata poems after his return to Japan. It originated from "The Festival to Plead for Skills" (Kikkoden), which was celebrated in China and also was adopted in the Kyoto Imperial Palace from the Heian period. In Japan, the story was merged with the legend about a celestial weaver maiden, Tanabatahime. Tanabata in later centuries gained widespread popularity among the general public, and developed into the modern Tanabata festival. A popular custom associated with the festival is for girls to wish for better sewing and craftsmanship, and boys for better handwriting by writing wishes on narrow strips of colored paper, which were tied on bamboo branches. Considering the Tanabata legend, poems with romantic aspirations were also popular. According to legend, when the ink for these poems was made of dew gathered from the leaves of the taro plant (satoimo) on the morning of Tanabata, the writer’s calligraphy would improve - but that was still in the future at the time that our poem was written.
[Modern Tanabata festival in Fukushima]
An interesting point is that the Eurasian magpie (Pica pica) was unknown in Japan until it was brought from Korea in the 16th c. In China, where the legend originated, magpies were common birds, so the Japanese learned the name without knowing the bird (they probably thought the "kasasagi" was a kind of "sagi," a heron!). In China the folk story about the Ox Herd and Weaver Maiden already occurs in a book written in the 2nd century CE.
Takaoka Station, Toyama Pref.]
The Poet
Otomo no Yakamochi (718?-780, "Midddle Counselor," "Chunagon") is famous as the compiler of the Manyoshu and the last major poet included, with the substantial number of 479 poems, making up 10% of the total Manyoshu volume as a sort of "poem diary." Yakamochi, the scion of an influential family, grew up as a fashionable young man in literary court circles and exchanged love poems with innumerable woman. At age 30 Yakamochi served as governor of Etchu (now Toyama Pref.) where he diverted himself with excursions to scenic spots and parties with other officials, catching everything in his unique poetry, known for its delicate depictions of nature. Unfortunately, after his return to the capital Nara in 751 he was so busy furthering his career and at the same time embroiled in political intrigue, that he wrote little or no poetry anymore. As Donald Keene says in Seeds in the Heart, his poetry lacks the grandeur of Hitomaro, but his voice is distinctive. "Anticipating the Kokinshu, his poetry is often melancholy rather than tragic, exquisitely phrased rather than explosively intense." Yakamochi wrote in almost every mode, from highly personal lyrics to public poems composed to a command from the court.Man'yoshu
The Man'yoshu (万葉集, literally "Collection of Myriad Leaves") is the oldest extant collection of Japanese waka, compiled sometime after 759 during the Nara period. The compiler, or the last in a series of compilers, is today widely believed to be Otomo no Yakamochi: chronologically the last poem in the collection is from 759. The Man'yoshu contains many poems from a much earlier period, with the bulk of the collection coming from the period between 600 and 750.
The Man'yoshu consists of 20 volumes and contains 4,516 waka poems. Qua format, the collection contains 260 choka (long poems), 4,200 tanka (short poems), and a small number of poems in different formats. While the later imperial waka collections followed a strict principle of structure (spring, summer, autumn, winter, farewell, love, etc.), the arrangement of the poems in Man’yoshu is still largely disorganized. The poems can be divided into four groups, which are distributed over the entire text corpus:
(1) Kusagusa no uta or Zoka - mixed poems, such as congratulatory poems, imperial progresses and other forms of travel, banquet poetry and ballads.
(2) Somon - love songs.
(3) Banka - elegies, which include songs about the death of members of the imperial family.
These songs were composed by people of various status, such as the emperor, aristocrats, junior officials, soldiers, and so on. In the Man’yoshu, 530 authors are named, including 70 women. In addition, half the verses are of anonymous authorship. Famous names include Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, Yamabe no Akahito, Otomo no Tabito, and Yamanoue no Okura,
The Man'yoshu uses one of the earliest Japanese writing systems, called man'yogana. This system (which was also used to transcribe vernacular poetry in the earlier Kojiki) uses Chinese characters to represent sometimes words (logographs) and sometimes sounds (phonographs). These systems became obsolete and partially unintelligible after the development of the simpler hiragana and katakana phonetic systems in the early Heian period.
Overall, Man'yoshu poems are more emotional than intellectual, and sadness is expressed more frequently than happiness. Love poetry, for example, sings more of longing than consummation, of absence rather than presence. Travel poetry concentrates more on homesickness than the diversions of the road.
The Man'yoshu consists of 20 volumes and contains 4,516 waka poems. Qua format, the collection contains 260 choka (long poems), 4,200 tanka (short poems), and a small number of poems in different formats. While the later imperial waka collections followed a strict principle of structure (spring, summer, autumn, winter, farewell, love, etc.), the arrangement of the poems in Man’yoshu is still largely disorganized. The poems can be divided into four groups, which are distributed over the entire text corpus:
(1) Kusagusa no uta or Zoka - mixed poems, such as congratulatory poems, imperial progresses and other forms of travel, banquet poetry and ballads.
(2) Somon - love songs.
(3) Banka - elegies, which include songs about the death of members of the imperial family.
These songs were composed by people of various status, such as the emperor, aristocrats, junior officials, soldiers, and so on. In the Man’yoshu, 530 authors are named, including 70 women. In addition, half the verses are of anonymous authorship. Famous names include Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, Yamabe no Akahito, Otomo no Tabito, and Yamanoue no Okura,
The Man'yoshu uses one of the earliest Japanese writing systems, called man'yogana. This system (which was also used to transcribe vernacular poetry in the earlier Kojiki) uses Chinese characters to represent sometimes words (logographs) and sometimes sounds (phonographs). These systems became obsolete and partially unintelligible after the development of the simpler hiragana and katakana phonetic systems in the early Heian period.
Overall, Man'yoshu poems are more emotional than intellectual, and sadness is expressed more frequently than happiness. Love poetry, for example, sings more of longing than consummation, of absence rather than presence. Travel poetry concentrates more on homesickness than the diversions of the road.
Visiting
Cities famous for their Tanabata Festivals are Sendai (taking place around August 7) and Hiratsuka (around July 7), but you'll find the bamboo branches adorned with tanzaku on which wishes have been written all over Japan.
References: Pictures of the Heart, The Hyakunin Isshu in Word and Image by Joshua S. Mostow (University of Hawai'i Press, 1996); Traditional Japanese Poetry, An Anthology, by Steven D. Carter (Stanford University Press, 1991); Hyakunin Isshu by Inoue Muneo, etc. (Shinchosha, 1990); Genshoku Hyakunin Isshu by Suzuki Hideo, etc. (Buneido, 1997); Ogura Hyakunin Isshu at Japanese Text Initiative (University of Virginia Library Etext Center); Hyakunin Isshu wo aruku by Shimaoka Shin (Kofusha Shuppan); Basho's Haiku (2 vols) by Toshiharu Oseko (Maruzen, 1990); The Ise Stories by Joshua S. Mostow and Royall Tyler (University of Hawai'i Press, 2010); Kokin Wakashu, The First Imperial Anthology of Japanese Poetry by Helen Craig McCullough (Staford University Press, 1985); Kokinshu, A Collection of Poems Ancient and Modern by Laurel Rasplica Rodd and Mary Catherine Henkenius (University of Tokyo Press, 1984); Kokin Wakashu (Shogakkan, 1994); Shinkokin Wakashu (Shogakkan, 1995); Taketori Monogatari-Ise Monogatari-Yamato Monogatari-Heichu Monogatari (Shogakkan, 1994). Seeds in the Heart, Japanese Literature from Earliest Times to the Late Sixteenth Century by Donald Keene (Henry Holt and Company, 1993).
[The photos of the Shinshinden and Tanabata festival are my own work; the others are from Wikipedia]