KKS 1

Contents | Next poem

Text

ふるとしに春たちける日よめる

Read on the day when spring began in the old year.

在原元方

Ariwara no Motokata

年の内うちに春は来にけり　一年ひととせを去年こぞとやいはむ　今年ことしとやいはむ

toshi no uchi ni             Within the year
haru wa ki-ni-keri           I see that spring has arrived!
hitotose wo                  One year:
kozo to ya iwa-mu            Shall we call it last year?
kotoshi to ya iwa-mu         Shall we call it this year?

Notes

spring began in the old year

This refers to the interaction of the solar and lunar calendars. The start of the season was determined by counting lunar months, with "intercalary" months inserted every so often to bring the 360-day lunar year and the 365 day solar year into alignment. But the "first month" of the lunar calendar could (and often did) start before the solar year had begun, thus resulting in the situation described in this poem.

I see that

The suffix keri, when used in poetry, indicates a realization or surprise.

One year

Although hitotose means "one year," it's not entirely clear what the reference is, and there is a surprising amount of disagreement as to exactly what period of time is referred to here. Takeoka and Katagiri both explain the meaning in this way: Spring, which should only come once in a year, has come twice. So do I refer to this entire year as "this year" or "last year" (since a new spring has come). On the other hand, the newer Kokinshū commentary in the Waka bungaku taikei series interprets the "one year" as the period up to the previous day (before the start of this spring).

Other sources:

• Kokin waka rokujō | Wakan rōeishū
• Go rokuroku shū | Korai futeishō | Teika hachidaishō

Analysis

The Kokinshū begins with a poem that does not contain any explicit spring imagery, but simply comments on the conflict between the lunar and solar calendars. This theme had already appeared in the Man'yoshū, poem 4492 by Ōtomo no Yakamochi:

月数めばいまだ冬なりしかすがに霞たなびく春立ちぬとか

When we count the months, it is still winter. And yet the mist is rising, and spring has come.

Matsuda (Shinshaku) sees the MYS poem as simplistic, in contrast to Motokata's "complex and splendid" poem.

The prominent placement of this poem at the beginning of Japan's most prestigious poetic anthology has resulted in a great deal of commentary and analysis, not all of which has much to do with the poem itself.

The poem is found in a number of “good poetry” collections, and Fujiwara no Shunzei wrote in the Korai Futeishō “This poem has strong logic, is pleasant to the ear, and is a splendidly composed poem.” A later pseudo-Teika work called the Sangoki included the poem as an example of the "pine style," which was defined as a poem that can be appreciated no matter how many times you hear it, and that has strength and propriety, with no extraneous matter. Some of this fulsome praise it received may have been simply out of respect for its place as the first poem in the most prestigious waka collection.

In modern times, the poet Masaoka Shiki made a famous attack on the Kokinshu in 1898, where he wrote that this poem was "disgustingly insipid" and "so silly that it fails to rise even to the level of vulgar wit." McCullough also describes the poem as having “sterile wit” and agrees with some other commenters that his poetry is not especially good but served a useful purpose in the structure of the Kokinshu’s organization. These interpretations seem to predicated on the idea that the poem is only about a joking comment on what to call something, with no deeper meaning.

But many other commenters see the power of this poem in its implied longing for the coming spring. Kubota considers the poem dry except for the anticipation of spring that lies behind it. Kaneko explains the poet's confusion as childish (although not necessarily in a deprecating way), but it's no more childish than other feigned confusions (e.g. between plum blossoms and snow) found in the collection. Takeoka notes that the poem contains no seasonal imagery, and thus functions largely as a "prelude" to the spring volume and the collection as a whole. He praises the construction of the poem, noting the "strength" of the first two lines contrasted with the weakness and doubt of the remainder. The poem progresses from a "scene" to a "reason." He finds the poem in stark contrast to both the Chinese style as well as that of the Man'yōshū. However, he quotes another scholar, Kojima Noriyuki, who considers this a mediocre poem by a mediocre poet, but one that served its purpose at the start of the volume.

The question of why this poem was placed first is one that has also been addressed throughout the history of Kokinshū criticism. Later Imperial collections assigned the first poem of the collection typically to a high-ranking or prestigious person, and it seems to have been an honor to be placed first in a collection, or first in a book. It's not clear at all that the Kokinshū compilers intended this by their choice of the first poem, considering the still somewhat doubtful status of Japanese poetry. But many early commenters assumed that there had to be some reason why Motokata was chosen. One explanation was that Motokata was the grandson of Ariwara no Narihira. Other commenters tried to read the poem as a summing up of the title of the collection: Sōgi thought the poem contained both old (implicitly in "last year") and new, thus reinforcing the title of the collection. This was the teaching of Tō no Tsuneyori, the founder of the Kokin denjū secret teachings. He goes on to suggest that the old and new are somehow representative of heaven and earth, and thus good government. In this he was following Chinese precedent, which connected poetry to virtuous living.

The Confucian-inspired readings were rejected by Keichu and commentators after him. Modern commentators see this as simply the best place to put this poem about the calendar vs. nature, and that there is no particular honor to Motokata. Matsuda sees the poem as providing a keynote to the "start of spring" poems, which commonly evoke the difference between spring on the calendar, and what the world actually looks like.

Finally, this poem appears in an anecdote in the 1283 setsuwa collection Shasekishū 沙石集. A monk who knows nothing about poetry is presented with this poem by his disciples. His only takeaway is that it reflects the fleeting nature of life as in Buddhism -- thus showing that people like him view everything as a Buddhist lesson.

Contents | Next poem