Kokinshu #297

[lnhammer]

Written when he visited the northern hills, saying he was going to pick the autumn leaves.

    The autumn leaves that
deep in the mountains scattered
    where there was not
even one person to see
are just a "brocade at night."

—20 August-3 September 2012

Original by Ki no Tsurayuki. The northern hills are, as in #95, those north of the capital. The effect in the first three-and-a-half lines of modifiers crossed and separated from their head-word (chiranuru="(that) scattered" modifies momiji="autumn leaves" while hito mo nakute="(where) there is not even a person" modifies okuyama="mountain depths") is difficult to recreate in a language without inflections. This reads simply as a striking visual comparison until one realizes it's an allusion to the proverbial Chinese comparison of something pointless, or done to no effect, to wearing a brocade coat in the dark, where no one can see it (from a biography of Xiang Yu in the Shi ji, the Han dynastic history, where it's used of a man who does not visit his hometown after becoming successful) -- in other words, Tsurayuki is being learnedly snarky about the behavior of the leaves.


miru hito mo
nakute chirinuru
okuyama no
momiji wa yoru no
nishiki narikeri

---L.