KKS 81

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Text

東宮雅院とうぐうのがゐんにて、桜の花の御溝みかは水に散りて流れけるを見てよめる　

At the Crown Prince's Wing, he read this on seeing cherry blossoms falling and floating down the stream

菅野高世

Sugano no Takayo

枝よりもあだに散にし花なれば落ちても水の泡とこそなれ

eda yori mo ada ni chiri-ni-shi hana nare-ba ochite-mo mizu no awa to koso nare

From the moment they leave The branches and fall, the flowers Are evanescent So when they hit the water They turn into bubbles.

Notes

Crown Prince's Wing

This is a building in the palace that was used for Coming of Age ceremonies for Crown Princes, as well as other ceremonies and events. There is some doubt about exactly where the building was located.

Stream

These are artificial streams in the palace.

Sugano no Takayo

He lived in the early 9th century.

Analysis

Bubbles in the water was a common symbol of evanescence and transience, showing up in poetry as early as the Man'yōshū. This poem combines that image with the short-lived cherry blossoms. As Matsuda(1968) indicates, the rather "cold" logic of this poem is in stark contrast to the surrounding poems which are focused more on the human emotion in response to the falling flowers. Despite this, the poem does include a subtext of lamenting the falling of the flowers, and the prose preface lends an immediacy to the scene, allowing the reader to imagine the elegance of the petals drifting in the water of the palace.

Beyond this basic interpretation, a number of scholars have tried to link the poem's feeling to some real life event, such as the death of an Emperor. Many earlier commentators identified specific Crown Princes or Emperors that the poem applied to, but they are often much later than the life of Sugano no Takayo. Also, some of these attempts are predicated on an idea that any detail in the prose preface must have been included for an important reason relevant to the poem's interpretation, which may not have actually been the case.

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