KKS 6

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Text

雪の木に降りかかれるをよめる

Read on snow fallen on a tree

素性法師

Priest Sosei

春たてば花とや見らん　白雪のかかれる枝に鶯のなく

haru tate-ba hana to ya mi-ran sirayuki no kakare-ru eda ni uguisu no naku

When spring begins Does it look like flowers? On the branch Covered in white snow The bush warbler cries.

Notes

This poem can be analyzed as two separate sentences (as in the translation), but the first part could be seen as modifying "snow", thus centering the poem on the middle line as a kind of pivot word.

Read on...

The phrasing of this preface may suggest that this was read on a set topic since it does not say "Read on seeing..." the way some poems do. However, the evidence seems to me to be too inconsistent to be certain about this, especially when alternate manuscript readings are taken into account.

Other sources:

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

Analysis

The previous two poems involved warblers and snow, but here the warbler is crying the full voiced cry of spring. The snow now looks like flowers to the poet, and thus probably to the warbler as well. Feigned confusion between snow and plum flowers, called mitate, is common in the KKS as well as in Chinese poetry, and the Man'yōshū.

The major topic of discussion in the poem is the warbler, and the fact that the warbler does not appear in the prose preface. Mabuchi thought that the warbler was imagined by the poet, whereas Kagawa (Seigi) explained the warbler as out of sight. The idea seems to be that if the poet actually saw the warbler on the branch, it would appear in the prose preface. Kubota(1937) disagrees, saying that the prose preface doesn't need to double what's in the poem. Katigiri goes back to the earlier commentators, stating that the prose preface does affect the reading of the poem and puts the focus away from the warbler.

Many commentators recognize that the poet is transferring his own desire for spring onto to the warbler (Kubota sees this as an example of "extra-feeling" (yojō)). The confusion between snow and plum blossoms is one that Japan got from Chinese poetry (see Takeoka p 245 for examples). Although Kagawa says that the poet finds snow more interesting than flowers, Kaneko(1927) interprets it rather that the snow now looks like flowers because it has become spring.

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