Kokinshu #24

A poem from the poetry contest held the palace of the consort in the Kanpyô era.

    Even the deep green
of the "unchanging pine trees" --
    now that springtime
has arrived, it more and more
grows surpassingly vivid.

—29 September 2010

Original by Minamoto no Muneyuki, grandson of Emperor Kôkô (author of #21). He died in 939, so was probably a young man when he participated in the contest in 893; he has six poems in the Kokinshu. One problem with oblique poetry is needing context to know what it's being indirect against. In this case, it's the conventional description in Chinese poetry of pines as unchanging green through the year -- thus making this an implicit statement of local chauvinism ("maybe their pines don't change, but as for Japanese pines ... "). To bring this out, I interpolated "deep," though it's arguable it's not really needed. The awkwardness of the last two lines is mostly my fault, as I don't see a good reading that doesn't use two synonymous adverbs.


tokiwa naru
matsu no midori mo
haru kureba
ima hitoshio no
iro masarikeri

---L.