Ten Poems by Saigyo
translated by Ad Blankestijn
(1)
on Mount Yoshino
I changed from the trail
I marked last year by breaking branch tips
so that I might seek out
blossoms in places I never went before
Yoshinoyama | kozo no shiori no | michi kaete | mada minukata no | hana o tazunen
吉野山こぞのしをりの道かへてまだ見ぬかたの花をたづねむ
(2)
why should my heart
still be stained
by cherry blossoms -
I who thought
I'd finally broken with the world?
hana ni somu | kokoro no ika de | nokorikemu | sutehateteki to | omou waga mi ni
花にそむ心はいかで殘りけむすて果てゝきと思ふわが身に
(3)
it's a shame
that people come in crowds
for cherry blossom viewing -
this is the only fault
of the cherry tree
hanami ni to | muretsutsu hito no | kuru nomi zo | atara sakura no | toga ni wa arikeru
花見にとむれつゝ人の來るのみぞあたら櫻の咎には有りける
(4)
in this mountain village
where there is no chance
of a visitor -
how dreary life would be
without my loneliness
tou hito mo | omotaetaru | yamazato no | sabishisa nakuba | sumiukaramashi
とふ人も | 思ひ絶えたる | 山里の | さびしさなくば | 住み憂からまし
(5)
I wish there were someone
to bear
this loneliness with me -
we'd put our huts side by side
in this wintry mountain village
sabishisa ni | taetaru hito no | mata mo are na | iori narabemu | fuyu no yamazato
さびしさにたへたる人の又もあれないほりならべん冬の山ざと
(6)
drifting in the wind
the smoke from the Fuji
vanishes in the sky
no one knows where to -
just like my own mind
kaze ni nabiku | Fuji no keburi no | sora ni kiete | yukue mo shiranu | waga kokoro kana
風になびくふじのけぶりのそらにきえてゆくゑもしらぬわが思哉
(7)
Composed along the way to somewhere in autumn
even though I claim
no longer to have a heart
I'm made to feel this sad beauty -
a snipe flying up from a marsh
at dusk in autumn
kokoro naki | mi ni mo aware wa | shirarekeri | shigi tatsu sawa no | aki no yugure
秋ものへまかりける道にて
心なき身にもあはれは知られけり鴫たつさはの秋のゆふぐれ
(8)
from a tree
standing on a ridge
by an old field
a dove calling its mate
at eerie nightfall
furu hata no | soba ni tatsu ki ni | iru hato no | tomo yobu koe no | sugoki yugure
ふるはたのそばのたつきにゐるはとのともよぶ声のすごきゆふぐ れ
(9)
in the sky of my mind
where darkness
has been dispelled
the clear moon
seems to near the western hills
yami harete | kokoro no sora ni | sumu tsuki wa | nishi no yamabe ya | chikaku naruran
闇はれて心のそらにすむ月は西の山べやちかくなるらん
(10)
let me die in spring
under the cherry blossoms
on that day
in the Second Month
when the moon is full
negawaku wa | hana no shita nite | haru shinan | sono kisaragi no | mochizuki no koro
願はくは花の下にて春死なむその如月の望月のころ
[Cherry blossoms on Mount Yoshino]
Saigyo (1118-1190, real name Sato Norikiyo), was a Japanese poet and Buddhist monk. He was born in Kyoto to a wealthy family who had served the imperial court for generations. He was very skilled with a bow and arrow and was good at poetry, whereupon he became a favorite of the ex-emperor Toba. He grew up at a time when power in the state was shifting from the court nobility to the rising class of the sword nobility.
At the age of 23 he gave up his wife and children, went to Saga and became a monk of the Buddhist Shingon school. The status of a monk enabled him to live a comparatively free wandering life, in the course of which he created a wealth of verses. He travels took him from the Kansai to Kamakura and northern Japan. But he spent most of his life living as a recluse on Mt Koya (where the head temple of the Shingon school stands) and Yoshino.
Saigyo exerted a great influence on later poets up to Sogi (1421-1502) and Matsuo Basho (1644-1694). Contemporaries and later generations valued him as the archetype of the wandering poet and poet monk.
[Saigyo]
Commentary on the poems:
(1)
Mount Yoshino was (and is!) very famous for its mountain cherries - and this fame grew in no small measure thanks to Saigyo's many poems on this subject. The cherry blossoms in Saigyo's poems function on the one hand as a symbol for his contradictory love of the world. But on the other hand Yoshino was also known as a sacred space and a site of religious training.
(2)
This poem was perhaps written soon after Saigyo took Buddhist vows, and expresses his consternation at his remaining attachments to the world in the form of his love for cherry blossoms. The internal conflict is typical of Saigyo.
(3)
The only fault Saigyo finds in cherry trees is that they are so beautiful that crowds of people come to see them, thereby disturbing the serenity of a monk in retreat. This poem formed the basis for the popular No play Saigyo-zakura (Saigyo and the Cherry Tree). In the play, the spirit of the cherry tree rebukes Saigyo for blaming the blossoms for his discomfort.
(4)
The perfect expression of Sabi.
(5)
Saigyo does not want to escape loneliness, but share it with someone else, by building their thatched huts for meditation next to each other. In reality, Saigyo never was a complete recluse, but he had frequent contacts with other monks, poets and aristocratic sponsors.
(6)
In the Heian-period, Mt Fuji was an active volcano, smoke escaping from its crater. Smoke is a symbol of transience.
(7)
Saigyo's most famous work. "No longer to have a heart" points at the fact that as a monk Saigyo is supposed to be in a state of calm detachment. But, as he claims, even such a person can not fail to be moved by the scene before him: the stillness of an autumn evening which is suddenly broken by a snipe (or snipes) fluttering up. It is a colorless scene like an ink painting.
(8)
There is a piercing loneliness in this poem, but Saigyo had embraced his loneliness and cherished it.
(9)
The moon is a symbol of satori and the Western Hills call the Western Paradise of the Buddha Amida to mind.
(10)
Saigyo's death poem. Instead of facing West as most monks did, Saigyo hopes to die under a blossoming tree, keeping his love for cherry trees until the end. According to records, Saigyo died exactly in the way and in the period he has asked for. He died at Hirokawa Temple in Kawachi Province (present-day Osaka Prefecture) at age 72.
Translations:
Saigyô, Poems of a Mountain Home, translated by Burton Watson, Columbia University Press, 1991
William R. LaFleur. Awesome Nightfall: The Life, Times, and Poetry of Saigyō. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003
Traditional Japanese Literature, An Anthology, by Haruo Shirane, Columbia U.P., 2007 (pp. 573-583, by Jack Stoneman)
Traditional Japanese Poetry, An Antholohy, by Steven D. Carter, Stanford U.P., 1991 (pp. 157-168)
Saigyo's Sanka wakashu at Japanese Text Initiative
Shin Kokinshu at Japanese Text Initiative
Photos:
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons