Ten poems from the Kokinshū

Ki no Tomonori (850-904) and Ki no Tsurayuki (872-945), the cousinly dynamic duo behind the Kokin Wakashū or Kokinshū (古今和歌集, “Collection of Ancient and Modern Japanese Poems,” the first of the Imperial Poetry Anthologies), were no strangers to brutally hot and humid summer weather. These men lived in Kyoto, where I have been in July and where you could not pay me to go in July again. In the Kokinshū they have many seasonal poems attributing to summer imagery a certain cruelty and brutality; often these poems are about cicadas, symbols of both summer and impermanence. In the interests of making Classical Japanese poetry timely and relevant to those of us who are beginning to experience summer as a somewhat apocalyptic time, I have translated all ten of these cicada poems. They are numbers 73, 448, 543, 715, 716, 831, 833, 876, 1,035, and 1,101 in the anthology. 73, 448, 543, and 716 are anonymous; 715, 833, and 876 are by Ki no Tomonori himself; 831 and 1,035 are by other named individuals. 1,101 may or may not be by Ki no Tsurayuki himself; I’ve seen manuscripts attributing it to him and manuscripts in which it is unattributed.

Note that the death, rebirth, and apocalypse-related overtones of the cicada poems gradually diminish throughout the anthology. The second-to-last cicada poem in the book, number 1,035, is outright sentimental, but can be taken seriously to provide something of a way forward in hard, seemingly impossible times: put simply, people can get used to an awful lot.

73.

空蝉の世にもにたるか花ざくらさくと見しまにかつちりにけり

What, O cherry blossom, are you so like this cicada shell of a world?

I see you bloom, and in that moment already you scatter.

448.

Bush Clover*

空蝉のからは木ごとにとどむれどたまのゆくへを見ぬぞかなしき

As empty cicada shells cling to trees, thus the body is left in this world.

Yet how sad it is not to see the soul’s destination.

*Evidently “karahagi,” “bush clover,” the title of the poem, is a pun on からは木“kara ha ki,” “[something] empty [acting on] a tree.”

543.

あけたてば蝉のをりはへなきくらしよるはほたるのもえこそわたれ

From daybreak I spend the day crying without cease like a cicada.

By night my heart wavers and blazes like a firefly.

715.

By Ki no Tomonori. From a poetry contest held by Empress Dowager Tōin in the days of Emperor Uda (r. 887-897)

蝉のこゑきけばかなしな夏衣うすくや人のならむと思へば

A cicada cries; what a mournful sound.

I feel that person will become fickle, thin as summer clothes.

716.

空蝉の世の人ごとのしげければわすれぬもののかれぬべらなり

Hearsay leafing out verdantly in this cicada shell of a world

Will wither even the bonds I won't forget.

831.

By Monk Shōen. Composed after the Horikawa Chancellor’s (836-891) death and funeral at Mt. Fukakusa.

空蝉はからを見つつもなぐさめつ深草の山煙だにたて

Just viewing the empty cicada shell of his body was some consolation.

O Mt. Fukakusa, at least let the smoke rise high.

833.

By Ki no Tomonori. Composed after the death of Marquess Fujiwara no Toshiyuki (d. 901 or 907) and delivered to his house.

ねても見ゆねでも見えけりおほかたは空蝉の世ぞ夢には有りける

Sleeping and waking, I see him still.

It is true what they say—this cicada shell of a world is as a dream.

876.

By Ki no Tomonori. Once when he stayed over at someone’s house to avoid going in an unlucky direction, his host lent him a robe to wear at night, and he composed this poem upon returning it the next morning.

This night garment is as light as a cicada’s wings.

Yet how heavy hangs and spreads the lingering fragrance.

1,035.

By Mitsune, either the famed poet Ōshikōchi no Mitsune (859-925) or another man or woman with the same (unisex) given name.

蝉の羽のひとへにうすき夏衣なればよりなむ物にやはあらぬ

A bond grows more comfortable with wear, like an unlined summer garment

With nothing under it, the thinness of a cicada's wings.

1,101.

Cicadas*

そま人は宮木ひくらしあしひきの山の山びこよびとよむなり

Woodsmen have been felling trees for the shrine all day.

From the footsore mountains mountain-echoes resound.

*The word used for “cicada” in this title, “higurashi,” is not the word, “semi,” used elsewhere in the anthology. It is a pun on ひくらし “hikurashi,” “all day.” The pun on “all day” and a symbol of impermanence or fragility would not have been lost on the tenth-century Japanese readership.

宮 “miya” can mean either “palace” or “shrine.” I depart from most translators here by giving it the sense “shrine.”

A poem by Saigyō (1118-1190)

This waka (the “most traditional” Japanese poetic form—the 5-7-5 familiar from haiku, followed by two more lines of seven morae each) is the work of the twelfth-century monk-poet Saigyō. It appears in the seventeenth volume of 1205's Shin Kokin Wakashū (新古今和歌集, “New Collection of Ancient and Modern Japanese Poems”), the eighth of the twenty-one Imperial Poetry Anthologies, whose intermediate points in the sequence is reflected in its modifier-heavy title. The doves in the poem make me think of this as something of a “Pentecost special,” especially since there is plenty of explicitly Pentecost-themed literature, such as Eliot's “Four Quartets” or O'Connor's “The Enduring Chill,” with just as morose a style and tone.

Many of Saigyō's poems, as with those of his later emulator Bashō, are unmediated descriptions of experiences he had traveling around Japan. In perhaps no other literature is the travelogue as august a literary form. Japan mastered it as early and as thoroughly as Occitania mastered the lyric poem or England the novel.

古畑の そばの立つ木に ゐる鳩の 友呼ぶ声の すごき夕暮れ

The voice of a dove calling for a companion from a tall tree—

The awesome sereness of this field at dusk.