Kokinshu #121

Topic unknown.

    It's now, isn't it,
that they'll be blossoming forth
    in all their glory:
the kerria on the headland
of Tachibana Island ...

—21 July 2011

Original author unknown. On to the other canonical flower of late spring. I'm a little dubious about rendering yamabuki as "kerria," as the name is from the Irishman who introduced it to the West, but the word does have a more pleasing soundshape than the other possible translation, wild yellow rose. Yamabuki no hana ("kerria flowers") is another noun phrase that exactly fills a line -- this time a 7-syllable one, which means it cannot be grammatically marked in poetry. In this case, it's the head of a long noun phrase that would, were the sentence in standard order, be the subject. Tachibana Island, usually identified as the one in Uji River southeast of Kyoto (near Byôdô Temple), is named after a type of mandarin orange cultivated for its scent, giving us two flowers for the price of one.

Bonus link: ukiyo-e prints of yamabuki.


ma mo ka mo
saki-niouramu
tachibana no
kojima no saki no
yamabuki no hana

---L.