English translation of the prose
AI-assisted English translation of the prose; quoted poems remain in Japanese. The Japanese original remains authoritative.
Originally published: 16 October 2021.
A historical report from the Japanese website. Public-health and event references reflect the time of writing. Quoted poems and lyrics remain in Japanese.
Japan Romantic Poetry Forum: Autumn, Kannazuki
Recorded 16 October 2021
Record and commentary: 河内裕二, Japan Romanticism Society
There is a saying, “autumn for reading.” A line from Han Yu’s Chinese poetry, 灯火親しむべし, regarded as its source, means something like autumn nights being suited to reading by lamplight. According to the Daisaijiki, Edo-period haiku poets began quoting it. Summer heat would indeed have been trying when reading beside a flame. Autumn, cooler and with longer nights, was naturally considered ideal. The same applies to composing poetry: cool autumn allows concentration. By mid-October, the gathering day was comfortably autumnal.
The joint gathering began at 13:30 on 16 October at Miura Workers’ Civic Center. From the Miura Tanka Association came president 三宅尚道, 加藤由良子, 嘉山光枝, 櫻井艶子, 嶋田弘子, and 玉榮良江; from the Japan Romanticism Society, President Seishu Hamano and 河内裕二. 清水和子 of the Miura association also sent poems.
コロナ解けわずかに残れる中学の
クラス会あり久しい便り 由良子
The poet is 加藤由良子. During the pandemic its meaning is readily understood. This evocative poem mixes the joy of meeting classmates again with sadness at how few can now participate.
人世（ひとよ）老ひかぼそき腕（かひな）で野分け戸を
閉めて雷（いかづち）しっぽり想ひて 成秋
A work by President Hamano. As a typhoon approaches, he closes the shutters with aged arms while thunder sounds outside. This recalled a popular song his mother sang after learning the shamisen. Its lyrics have thunder closing the doors and the pair becoming intimately soaked together; the second half derives from that. Looking it up, I found the parlor song “Shin Tosa-bushi,” with these words:
雷さんは粋な方だよ 戸を閉めさせて
二人 しっぽり 濡らした 通り雨よ
そうだ そうだ まったくだよ
The poem also contains Hamano’s feeling for his mother, though that cannot be read from the words alone.
きぬかつぎ茹でて塩つけ食すれば
旬の小芋はやっぱり旨し 光枝
A poem by 嘉山光枝. Kinukatsugi is taro boiled in its skin; the poem celebrates the delicious small tubers now in season. She often writes about food. As the phrase “food culture” suggests, food characterizes peoples and regions. What one cooks, how one prepares it, and the manners of eating are history and culture themselves.
秋めいた風の音 聞くラジオより
「少年時代」たびたび流る 尚道
“Shonen Jidai” is Yosui Inoue’s hit released in 1990. Its author here, 三宅尚道, wondered whether readers unfamiliar with the song would find the poem difficult. Judging by the lyrics, beginning 夏が過ぎ風あざみ, it sings of an “I” immersed in memories of a vanished summer. It is reportedly often played on the radio in autumn, so hearing it must make him feel the season has arrived. He also composed with this poem by Fujiwara no Toshiyuki in the Kokin Wakashu in mind:
秋来ぬと目にはさやかに見えねども
風の音にぞおどろかれぬる 藤原敏行朝臣
We often feel autumn by seeing colored leaves or the moon, but Miyake feels it in the wind’s sound and music on the radio. The poem reveals his rich sensitivity.
夕暮れに月下美人を褒められて
娘と思うか落ちつかぬ夜 和子
A work by 清水和子, absent today. The queen-of-the-night flower blooms in the evening and fades within one night. Is this about the flowering of one she grows, or a metaphor? Participants debated “daughter.” In one reading, it means the flower, regarded as her daughter. In another, it means the poet herself, unsettled by wondering whether the person praising the flower might see her as a young woman. The appeal lies not in determining the correct answer but in stimulating imagination and permitting varied readings.
晩秋の道に落ちたるどんぐりの
行く末われに重なりて見ゆ 裕二
My own poem, composed on seeing acorns fallen and rolling along a road in deepening autumn. On soil they would eventually sprout, but most fall on pavement and are crushed by people and cars. Some quietly escape at the road’s edge; a lucky few remain unhurt even in the middle. It felt somehow like looking at human society.
The poem conveyed great loneliness, and everyone was slightly surprised that I, the youngest participant, wrote it. They called it well formed.
コロナ禍の新しいままの靴履いて
半歩踏み出す青天だから 弘子
The poet is 嶋田弘子. Her daughter gave her shoes for Mother’s Day, but unable to go anywhere during the pandemic, she left them long in the shoe cupboard. After the state of emergency was lifted, a clear day following a typhoon finally made her want to wear them outside. Yet the pandemic had not ended. Anxiety remained; she could not take a full step. The phrase “half a step” contains the feeling that life cannot yet be as before.
Participants praised the expression of pandemic confinement through still-new shoes.
台風に打たれて濡れしゴーヤーの
実は残りをりふとらぬままに 良江
A work by 玉榮良江, who grows vegetables. Insufficient sunlight and persistent rain had damaged her bitter-melon crop, and the poem sketches that condition. Its harvest season runs roughly from July to September; perhaps the last harvest disappointed her. Maybe because of their bitterness, wild animals leave them alone, and fine weather yields splendid fruit. It is poignant that the thin, light fruit remained without falling even through a typhoon. Another vegetable would not create this melancholy.
雨風に秋の訪れ聞きし日は
夫のぬくもりおぼろなつかし 艶子
The poet is 櫻井艶子. Three years have passed since her husband died, and she often remembers him recently. Autumn’s loneliness recalled his kindness and prompted the poem. Kayama, widowed about ten years ago, said that memories remain densely packed for around three years and then gradually fade; she understood this poem well. Sakurai worried that おぼろ is a spring seasonal word in an autumn poem, but we agreed that this was no problem in tanka.
This gathering renewed my sense of how difficult it is to express a scene and feeling in the fixed thirty-one-syllable form. Yet that constraint concentrates language and content, giving depth. I imagine an iceberg: from its tip one imagines the great hidden mass. Understanding only the surface does not reach the core. Enfolded in the world expanding from the poem, one resonates with its author’s feeling. Tanka’s fixed form, continuing for thirteen hundred years, makes this possible. Encountering good works made today another fulfilling day.
Original wording, author credits, notes and source materials are preserved there.