KKS 12

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Text

寛平御時后きさいの宮の歌合うたあはせの歌

A poem at the Empress' Poetry Competition in the Kampyō era

源当純

Minamoto no Masazumi　

谷風に溶くる氷のひまごとにうち出る波や春の初花

tanikaze ni tokuru koori no himagoto ni uchi-izuru nami ya haru no hatsuhana

Through the spaces In the ice melted by The valley wind Waves come crashing forth: Are these the first flowers of spring?

Notes

This poem uses a taigen-dome (ending with a noun) technique. The first four lines are all a modifier for nami ("wave"), making the whole poem "Is X actually Y?" but without the verb specified.

Minamoto no Masazumi

(Late 9th, early 10th c.) He attained the junior 5th rank, but this poem is his only representation in the Imperial collections, and no personal poetry collection survives.

The valley wind

Most manuscripts read "mountain wind" instead, and this reading is also found in the Shinsen man'yōshū and the Kokin waka rokujō. On the other hand, the Wakan rōeishū reads "valley wind". So both readings existed in the Heian period, and Shunzei and Teika seem to have chosen the "valley wind" reading for their text. Chinese poetry uses "valley wind" to mean "east wind" (connected with spring), which may have influenced Teika's choice in the reading. But this could also be interpreted literally as wind from the valley, connecting to the idea of the warbler coming out of the valley at the beginning of spring (see KKS 14).

First flowers

Both Chinese poetry and the Man'yōshū' have examples of the whitecaps of waves representing flowers.

Other sources:

• Shinsen man'yōshū | Kokin waka rokujō | Wakan rōeishū
• Kingyokushū | Korai fūteishō | Teika hachidaishō

Analysis

This poem is another example of mitate (pretending that one thing looks like another). The flowers still have not yet bloomed, but now in addition to snow we have the white tops of the rushing stream appearing to be the early spring plums.

Fujiwara no Toshiyori (Toshiyori zuinō) identified this poem as having a "fault" (yamai 病) due to the first and third lines both ending with ni. This was not necessarily an indictment of the KKS poem per se, but more of a warning to current poets. It appeared in a number of selections of good poems from the KKS later so it was not regarded as a flawed poem overall.

Chokudenkai (19th c) clearly explains the links between the poems in this section. Previously there were no warblers, but now the valley wind blows and melts the ice (as in poem 2), then (poem 13) the scent of plums invites the warblers, who (poem 14) leave the valley at last. Matsuda(1968) questioned why the poem is here, interrupting the series on warblers. He notes that 12-15 are all from the poetry competition, creating a group. He also thinks that 12 sets up the scene for 13-14, similar to what the Chokudenkai says. Takeoka agrees, comparing it to the unrolling of a "warbler picture scroll".

Katagiri says that perhaps the warblers have not come from the valley because they've been confused by the "flowers" there -- as Takeoka says, up to now the "flowers" have been snow, but now we have advanced to the melting ice and water. Although we are still continuing the hakanashi theme of the image (flowers) not actually present.

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