GSS 12

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Text

寛平御時后きさいの宮の歌合のうた

よみ人しらず

吹風や　春たちきぬと　つげつらん　枝にこもれる　花さきにけり

Translation

A poem composed for the Empress' Poetry Contest in the Kampyo Era.

Poet unknown

Has the blowing wind / announced (2) / that spring has arrived? (3) / The flowers, sleeping in the branches, have bloomed! (4-5)

Textual notes

• 吹風や] 吹風に (承)
• つげつらん] つげぬらん (標ィ)
• こもれる] のこれる (承)
• さきにけり] 散りにけり (堀)

Other sources

• 新撰万葉集１５
• 古今和歌六帖３９１・春風
• 和歌童蒙抄

Notes

寛平御時后宮歌合

This was a poetry contest held in the early 890s. See the 寛平御時后宮歌合 entry for more details. 寛平 is either かんぴょう or かんぺい (Takeoka notes in the 古今和歌集全評釈 that the 日葡辞書 reads かんぺい). The reading of 御時 is uncertain, but おほむとき (おほんとき) is a common suggestion. The の particles (きさいのみやの...) are confirmed by several alternate manuscripts of both the GSS and KKS. As seen in the "other sources", this poem does not appear in extant manuscripts of the poetry competition although it does appear in the 新撰万葉集 which used the poetry competition as a primary source -- this may explain the possible mistake.

や...らん

This structure indicates the speaker's guess at an explanation for something.

枝にこもれる花

See KKS 331 (雪降れば冬ごもりせる草も木も春にしられぬ花ぞ咲きける) for a similar image.

花

The placement of this poem by the GSS compilers would encourage the interpretation of this as plum flowers. The original intent may have been a more wide application, although plums were the most common early-spring flower, and they were especially common in Chinese poetry (see the Analysis section).

咲きにけり

に is the RY of the completion ぬ, and けり is the speaker's sudden realization that something has happened.

Analysis

This poem is the first actual appearance of flowers in the spring volume (poem 5 mentions cherry blossoms but only as a future event).

Both 11 and 12 are "artificial" poems -- this poem is a rare example of a poem that is explicitly identified as coming from a poetry contest. Sato notes that the KKS has 135 poems from contests, 112 are explicitly identified as such. The GSS has a mere 36, of which only 12 are explicitly identified, and virtually all of them come from old poetry contests held before the composition of the KKS. This clearly shows the lack of importance the GSS compilers placed on such artificially composed poems.

The poem itself, as is typical of such public/artificial poems, uses a structure of seeing a natural phenomenon and guessing what the result is. In this case the spring, the wind, and the flowers are all personified with verbs that would normally refer to human activity (立ちく、告ぐ、こもる). Kifune feels that this contributes a fairy-tale like atmosphere.

The idea that the spring wind causes flowers to bloom is one that is found not only in earlier Japanese poetry but may be taken originally from Chinese poetry. Many commentaries cite a line from Bai Juyi (先遣和風報消行) with Katagiri and Tokuhara explicitly saying that this poem is based on the Chinese line. Certainly this would be an appropriate source for an officially-sponsored poetry competition. In addition, this would provide a further link between this poem and poem 11 (which seems to also based on a line of Chinese verse by Bai Juyi).

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