KKS 65

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折りとらば惜しげにもあるか桜花いざ宿借りて散るまでは見ん

ori-tora-ba oshi-ge ni mo aru ka sakurabana iza yado kari-te chiru made wa mi-n

If we pick and take one It will look with regret The cherry blossoms Well then, let's rent a room And watch them until they fall.

Analysis

This poem seems closely paired with 64, presenting the opposite feeling from the previous poem. This connection has been viewed in several ways: one manuscript of the Narihira Collection (which contains a number of poems not by Narihira) has this explicitly marked as a response to 64, a view which some later commentators take. Others view it as a kind of linked verse (renga). Takeoka would rather we focus on the skill of the compilers in placing the two poems together in the collection, rather than an imagined "response" or link.

There are a few differences in opinion on the details of the poem. The majority opinion (both modern and premodern) is that the oshi-ge (which indicates someone showing the emotion) is personifying the flowers, possibly with a feminine undertone.

However, the use of "rent (or borrow) a room" led commentators such as Mabuchi to see this as directed to the owner of a house, in praise of the blossoms on their property. Kaneko(1927) also thought this had to be a human owner, but both Takeoka and Katagiri read this as a further personification of the flowers. Thus we are staying in one of their rooms (Takeoka reads this as a further extension of the feminine subtext of the personification).

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