KKS 46

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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

よみ人しらず

Poet unknown

梅が香を袖にうつしてとどめてば春は過ぐとも形見ならまし

mume ga ka o sode ni utsushi-te todome-te-ba haru wa sugu to mo katami nara-mashi

I wish that I could Move the plum scent to my sleeves And hold it there Then even after spring passed It would be a memento.

Notes

Move the plum scent

This suggests the infusion of incense into clothing.

Other sources:

• Shinsen man'yōshū | Kokin waka rokujō
• Teika hachidaishō

Analysis

This poem creates a sense of loss and regret for the falling of the flowers, without explicitly mentioning the feelings or the actual petals falling. While Katagiri sees this as a typical sentiment of the age, other commentators are more generous in their praise of the poem. They point to the use of "after spring passed" to imply the falling of flowers (with Kubota(1937) even suggesting that the poet is behaving as if plums are the only important flowers of spring). The concluding mashi, indicating a counterfactual idea, emphasizes the impossibility of holding on to the transient spring image.

Kagawa Kageki (Seigi), questioned why the poet is "unknown" given that the compilers participated in the poetry competition, and the compilation of the KKS was not that long afterwards. He connects this with other problematic "poet unknown" attributions in the collection and assumes that there must be some specific reason behind it – for instance, the poet may have been stripped of his position by the Emperor, or poet was very high ranking and thus the compilers concealed their name out of respect. A number of modern commentaries quote Kageki’s opinion without comment. However, Katagiri explains that the poetry competition in question involved both new compositions and older existing poems, and that this poem was probably drawn from the same sources as the other "poet unknown" poems in the collection. This theory is also supported by the rather different versions of the poem found in the Shinsen waka and the Kokin waka rokujō, a typical situation with these old poems.

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