Translation glossary

鶯

Either "warbler" or "bush warbler" depending on metrical necessity.

霞

To distinguish this from 霧, I have used "haze" instead of "mist."

題しらず

The term 題 here, a Chinese loan word, seems to refer to the topic of the poem, or perhaps the circumstance of composition. The interpretation of 題しらず is somewhat unclear because some of the poems marked this way in the KKS are by the compilers themselves, and presumably they knew the circumstances of their own composition. There are also poems where it seems the compilers would have known or had access to the topic information but apparently chose not to use it.

Sogi thought this could refer to compositions in the moment, that had no assigned "topic," or one where the poem is on multiple things and a topic cannot be discerned, or where the topic did not actually appear in the poem. Matsunaga Teitoku adds that this can also be topics that are truly unknown, or where the compilers concealed the topic for some reason.

In the modern period, Kaneko and Kubota thought 題 referred to the circumstance rather than the topic, although Takeoka disagrees, citing evidence that 折しらず was available to the compilers if they wanted to talk about the circumstance.