KKS 10

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Text

春の始めによめる　　　　　　　　

Read on the start of spring

藤原言直

Fujiwara no Kotonao

春やとき花や遅きと聞わかん鶯だにも鳴かずもあるかな

haru ya toki hana ya osoki to kiki-waka-n uguisu da ni mo naka-zu mo aru kana

"Is spring early Or are the flowers late" I would ask Of the warbler, but even it Seems not to be crying!

Notes

Fujiwara no Kotonao

Little is known about him; he seems to have reached the 6th rank and was made a provincial governor in 900, but this is his only poem in the Imperial collections.

I would ask

This line has some ambiguity. The verb kiku could mean either "ask" or "listen", and the sentence may end here rather than the first 3 lines modifying "warbler." The subject of "listen" may also be the warbler rather than the poet. I have followed the most common interpretation in the translation, but the first part could also be "The warbler, who could hear whether spring is early or the flowers are late..."

Other sources:

• Kokin waka rokujō | Shinsen waka
• Korai fūteishō | Teika hachidaishō

Analysis

This is basically a poem about the absence of spring imagery -- both flowers and the warbler. Spring still does not seem to be here, and these ideas are expressed through the poetic conceit of asking the warbler about the season.

Kenshō (12th c.) questioned the propriety of the poet saying he doesn't know if spring is late, since the calendar should specify whether it's spring or not. He uses the word hakanashi (which can have a variety of meanings) to refer to this denial of reality, which has resulted in a great deal of later analysis of exactly what this meant. Teika criticized this view of the poem as bad. But later commentators seemed to agree that hakanashi here was being used as a measure of disapproval. Kubota(1937) and Matsuda(1968) took the word to mean "childish", applied to the idea that you would ask a bird to see if it's spring or not.

But the image of the warbler knowing the start of spring has already occurred in Poem 5, among others. Takeoka takes the hakanashi idea as referring rather to the lack of reality -- as in many of these early spring poems, imagery is used through its absence. In this case, both the flowers and the warbler are not there. Kagawa (Seigi) appropriately reads the supposed "childishness" of asking the warbler as an expression of the poet's feeling at the lack of spring.

Matsuda notes that the next poem is almost like a response to this one.

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