Kokinshu #40

When someone said on a moonlit night, "Break off some plum blossoms," he composed this as he did so.

    On a moonlit night,
even though they aren't seen,
    isn't it true that
we can know the plum flowers
by following their perfume?

—30 October 2010

Original by Ôshikôchi no Mitsune, who seems to have specialized in improvised social poetry. I'm not really sure how to read sore to mo here, but it seems to carry the sense of "even like that/even in that way" rather than the modern idiomatic conjunction, with the effect of a sort of concessive. You'd think the white flowers would show quite well at night, but apparently they are understood as blending with the white moonlight into invisibility. Or something like that. I can't say this is the most effective conceit ever, even aside from my parsing issues. Again, the flowers are grammatically unmarked, here best read as a genitive modifying "scent" in contrast to the next poem, but possibly a topic/direct object for the final verb.


tsuki yo ni wa
sore to mo miezu
ume no hana
ka o tazunete zo
shirubekarikeru

---L.