kanji koohii FORUM
Let's read the 百人一首 - Printable Version

+- kanji koohii FORUM (http://forum.koohii.com)
+-- Forum: Learning Japanese (http://forum.koohii.com/forum-4.html)
+--- Forum: The Japanese language (http://forum.koohii.com/forum-10.html)
+--- Thread: Let's read the 百人一首 (/thread-8822.html)

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5

Let's read the 百人一首 - yudantaiteki - 2011-12-24

There was a positive response to my idea in the last thread, so I guess I'll start posting a series of "lessons" (or annotations) on the 百人一首. First I should explain some basics, though, and how I'll be doing these.

What is the 百人一首?

The name means "One hundred people, one poem [each]". The name is a general name that can be applied to a number of works, but usually it refers to the 小倉百人一首, a work by the poet and scholar 藤原定家（ふじわらのていか） (1162-1241). Teika selected one poem each from one hundred poets, ranging from the 7th century (supposedly) up to his own time. The poems represent his own poetic tastes, and these should not necessarily be seen as the best 100 poems of all time. You can read more about it on Wikipedia or other Internet sites.

All of the poems are in the 和歌 or 短歌 format, which means a 31-beat/syllable poem divided into 5 lines (5-7-5-7-7 beats).

Why read/study it?

There are several good reasons to read it as a beginner in classical Japanese. 100 poems is short enough to read in its entirety, but still long enough to give you some depth. It's a good jumping off point for reading other Japanese poetry. Also, because of the popularity of the card game utagaruta, the work is still known today and many editions of it are published aimed at native Japanese people who have very little classical Japanese. There's even a current manga and anime series (ちはやふる) about karuta.

My idea is to post annotated versions of each poem, aimed at relative beginners to classical Japanese. I'm not going to assume much knowledge, although you should have some sort of reference that at least shows the classical conjugations (several of these can be found on the Internet, both in English and Japanese). For looking up classical words, many of them will not be in a J-E dictionary but a large J-J dictionary like the Koujien or Daijirin (goo.ne.jp, etc.) will suffice, although a dedicated classical dictionary is better.

The goal is not only to read the classical Japanese but also to learn about the poetic techniques, the authors themselves, and some traditional cultural elements.

Anyway, each post will have the following:

Text

I'm trying to practice 崩し字 as much as possible, so I'm first going to give a straight transcription from a manuscript that's in one of the books I have, then I'll do a 5-line cleaned up version with kanji, dakuten, etc. There will also be a romanization done by normal classical standards -- straight kana transcription following kunrei-shiki. As for actually reading the poems, nowadays people generally use an Edo-period pronunciation which is more or less the same as current pronunciation with a few differences (e.g. a + ふ is read as ou).

Notes

These are notes on the grammar and vocabulary, and sometimes the poetic techniques. They may seem a bit long since I tried to incorporate not just definitions but other information as well.

Translation

This is intended to be just a straight, basic translation, with no attempt to be poetic in English.

Author

Brief information on the author, although many of the authors have good articles on Wikipedia (if so I won't give a lot of information).

Source

All of the poems come from Imperial anthologies, so I will give the source of each poem. All poems in the anthologies have a 題 (circumstance of composition) which Teika omitted in the 百人一首, but I will give the 題 here since it's a good opportunity to read relatively simple classical Japanese prose.

Commentary

These are miscellaneous issues related to the poems and overall interpretation, as well as some classical commentary of the Kamakura, Muromachi, and Edo periods.

I hope this doesn't sound too imposing or difficult -- I'll try to post the first poem in the next day or two and then try to do one a week after that.

Let's read the 百人一首 - buonaparte - 2011-12-24

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?pid=121590#pid121590

An audio recording + parallel texts of the poems.

Let's read the 百人一首 - Splatted - 2011-12-24

This sounds really interesting Yudan. I look forward to the first installment. Big Grin

Let's read the 百人一首 - yudantaiteki - 2011-12-25

Here we go. This is kind of long. Let me know if you have any suggestions, and feel free to ask any questions, no matter how basic they seem -- I know a lot of people here have no experience at all with classical Japanese.

Poem 1

Text:
天智天皇御製
秋の田のかりほの庵のとまをあらみ
わかころもては露にぬれつゝ

秋の田の aki no ta no
仮庵の庵の kariho no iho no
苫を荒らみ toma wo ara-mi
我が衣手は waga koromode ha
露に濡れつつ tuyu ni nure-tutu

Notes:
天智天皇御製 – 御製 is read as ぎょせい. (てんぢてんわうぎよせい in old kana spelling)

秋: Seasonal references are important in waka, and many poems contain them even if they are not directly related to the season (although it is not as much of a fixed requirement as you find in haiku). The rest of the images in the poem are associated with autumn. The season was especially associated with sorrow, both due to the play on 飽き, and the images (such as falling leaves) that represented the transient world.

仮庵: This is a shortening of かり（仮)いほ(庵); a temporary hut. 庵 (modern いおり) is a simple dwelling associated with peasants. The redundancy of the line is to fill it out to 7 beats. There is possibly a play on 刈り穂（かりほ), the stalks cut down by the farmers.

苫: The thatched roof of the hut.

荒らみ: This is the stem of the -ku adjective 荒らし (cf. modern 荒らす), plus the suffix み. み is a suffix that was used in Nara-period Japanese, but by the Heian period it survived only in poetry. It indicates a cause or reason (like modern day から or ので). In Heian poetry it always occurs in the form XをYみ, with the を indicating the subject.

我が: Classical Japanese uses が as a possessive more productively than in modern Japanese, where it only survives in certain fixed phrases. However, わが is one of those fixed phrases that is still recognizable in modern Japanese. (The personal pronoun わ by the Heian period had become used only in certain set forms like わが)

衣手: A poetic word (歌語) for sleeves.

濡れつつ: The 連用形 of the verb 濡る plus つつ. Unlike in modern Japanese, in old Japanese this usually represents the repetition of an action. Wet sleeves (especially sleeves wet with dew) are a common symbol in poetry for someone crying.

Translation:
The thatched roof of the temporary hut in the autumn field is ruined; thus my sleeves are continually wet with dew.

Author:
天智天皇（てんじてんのう), 626-671. The 38th Emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession. His reign was from 661-671.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Tenji

Source:
後撰和歌集 (gosen wakashu). This is the second imperially commissioned anthology, compiled in 951. It has the usual division of books (seasons, love, miscellaneous, etc.) This poem is from the Autumn section. As in all poetic anthologies, each poem is preceded by a prose preface indicating the circumstance (題) of composition. In this case it is 題知らず (circumstance unknown). The majority of poems in the imperial anthologies ascribed to people from the Nara period are listed as 題知らず.

Commentary:
The main question surrounding this poem is what connection it has with Emperor Tenji. It's hard to imagine an Emperor sitting in a hut with holes in the roof. The poem does not appear in any collection until around three centuries after Tenji's death, and it may possibly derive from an anonymous Man'yoshu poem. These considerations make it unlikely that the poem was actually composed by the Emperor. It may have originated as a poem expressing the suffering of a peasant – this theme is not common in Japanese poetry, but it does occur sometimes in pre-Heian poetry, largely from Chinese influences (particularly the poetry of Bai Juyi). It's unclear how it became associated with Emperor Tenji.
Premodern commentaries accepted the imperial authorship, though, and some attempted to explain the poem's connection with the Emperor, resulting in some strained theories (which still seem to pop up in modern editions from time to time). One is that it represents the Emperor's pained thoughts at being unable to rule over the unified country. Another is that it refers to a specific time when the Emperor went to Saga and saw a peasant's hard life, and composed this poem in sorrow. Another is that it is a poem of mourning for the Emperor's father Jomei, and one commentary even seems to say that the Emperor actually constructed a temporary hut to stay in for 20 days while he mourned. The prevailing theory in the old commentaries is that it was written by the Emperor in sympathy for the hard life of the peasants under his rule.
This leads to a related, more minor concern, about whether the entire poem is the Emperor speaking in the voice of the peasant, or whether the last two lines are the Emperor himself crying after seeing the peasant's hovel.
The anonymous Man'yoshu poem mentioned above as the source of this poem was taken for use in the Shin kokinshu. Since Fujiwara no Teika was one of the editors of the Shin kokinshu, there's a good chance he knew that the poem he selected as poem 1 had doubtful authorship. He recorded in his diary (the Meigetsuki) that he wanted to begin with Emperor Tenji, and this may have been to create a parallel with the end of the work. Poems 1 and 2 are attributed to Emperor Tenji and Empress Jito (Tenji's daughter), and Poems 99 and 100 are Emperor Gotoba and Emperor Juntoku (Gotoba's son, who was most likely Emperor when the Hyakunin isshu was completed).

Let's read the 百人一首 - pm215 - 2011-12-25

yudantaiteki Wrote:As for actually reading the poems, nowadays people generally use an Edo-period pronunciation which is more or less the same as current pronunciation with a few differences (e.g. a + ふ is read as ou).
Does that correspond basically to "read the romanization as if it were romanization of modern Japanese" ?

How much do we know about Heian-era and earlier pronunciation? I guess we don't have the convenience of a set of related but diverging languages to cross-compare the way we do with the Indo-European family...

Let's read the 百人一首 - Fillanzea - 2011-12-25

There's some interesting resources out there on historical pronunciation. See for example this page on the ハ行 kana's historical changes.

Let's read the 百人一首 - IceCream - 2011-12-25

This is awesome Yudan, thanks!!! i never thought i'd study classical, but i'm definately going to follow this thread with interest!!!

i have a couple of questions, sorry if they're dumb...

*About あらみ：　By -ku adjective, do you mean i-adj, or should i look it up? If so, is it normal then for i-adjectives not to have the extra い on the end in classical Japanese, or is it only some of them?

Also, some i-adjectives still conjugate with a み, like 重み. So, was that not around at that time, or was み ambiguous back then?

*The か and て　in わかころもては (second line in the text) you say are が and で. Didn't they use the little marks back then then? How did people know how to read it then, or would they have read it か and て too?

Let's read the 百人一首 - Rayath - 2011-12-25

IceCream Wrote:i have a couple of questions, sorry if they're dumb...

*About あらみ：　By -ku adjective, do you mean i-adj, or should i look it up? If so, is it normal then for i-adjectives not to have the extra い on the end in classical Japanese, or is it only some of them?
If I can answer that part of the question:

I-adj and na-adj didn't exist in bungo. Today i-adjectives come from adjectives in bungo which ended in し (like よし、高し、美し) and na-adjectives come from adjectival verbs that ended in なり (like 明らかなり、静かなり).

Now, -ku adjective and -shiku adjective are terms that refer to the way in which that adjectives that ended in し conjugated. It's because they had two types of conjugation - -ku and -shiku. The way to tell in which way an adjective conjugated is to compare it to the modern i-adj. If it ends in しい (like 美し -> now 美しい), it means that it takes -shiku conjugation. If it just ends in い (without し in front of it, like よし、高し　- よい、高い), it takes -ku conjugation.

So because 荒らし is 荒い now, it is ku-adjective.

Let's read the 百人一首 - ta12121 - 2011-12-25

Nice idea, this is definitely something I will be srsing soon.

Let's read the 百人一首 - yudantaiteki - 2011-12-25

IceCream Wrote:This is awesome Yudan, thanks!!! i never thought i'd study classical, but i'm definately going to follow this thread with interest!!!

i have a couple of questions, sorry if they're dumb...
Don't worry, they're not dumb at all.

Quote:*About あらみ：　By -ku adjective, do you mean i-adj, or should i look it up? If so, is it normal then for i-adjectives not to have the extra い on the end in classical Japanese, or is it only some of them?

Also, some i-adjectives still conjugate with a み, like 重み. So, was that not around at that time, or was み ambiguous back then?
Rayath answered the first part well. The み in 重み is a different み than the one in this poem (although both existed in classical Japanese).

Quote:*The か and て　in わかころもては (second line in the text) you say are が and で. Didn't they use the little marks back then then? How did people know how to read it then, or would they have read it か and て too?
The voicing marks (dakuten) were not regularly used until the Meiji period, although they were used in some cases before then. Sometimes in older texts you see them added in a different color ink. As for how people knew how to read it, it's just context. Although there are some cases where we're still not sure today whether to voice it or not. (They would not have read it か and て; voiced syllables go back to the earliest written Japanese.)

pm215:
Quote:Does that correspond basically to "read the romanization as if it were romanization of modern Japanese" ?
Pretty much, although the romanization will follow old kana usage. The romanization method is normal in classical studies because it avoids having to take a position on how the syllables would actually have been pronounced. This is especially relevant for something like this -- the particle は in this poem would (probably) have been pronounced as "pa" when it was originally written, and probably something like "fa" when it was put in the Gosenshu in the 10th century, and by the Edo period it was "wa" although I don't know how Teika himself would have read it in the 13th century.

(If you're wondering why I'm using romanization instead of kana, I think it's easier to show the spacing and use dashes to show suffixes, which is helpful if you're not used to classical.)

Let's read the 百人一首 - Jaxon - 2011-12-25

Wow, this is really great, Yudan! I'm looking forward to more.

Let's read the 百人一首 - Tzadeck - 2011-12-25

This will be a very awesome thread, I think. I already learned things from the first poem. Very cool idea yudantaiteki.

Let's read the 百人一首 - Eikyu - 2011-12-25

Thank you. It's a very interesting project. It would make a great book... "YTT's Introduction to Classical Japanese".

Let's read the 百人一首 - raharney - 2011-12-26

This is brilliant. Keep going. Thanks so much.

Let's read the 百人一首 - IceCream - 2011-12-26

thankyou Rayath & Yudan for the clear explanations!!! Big Grin

Let's read the 百人一首 - Hinode - 2011-12-26

This is indeed a great idea! I have thus far not dabbled into classical Japanese in the least, does anyone know of a good introduction/website where the basics of bungo are explained?

Let's read the 百人一首 - yudantaiteki - 2011-12-27

Here are two that have conjugations and such:
http://www.sengokudaimyo.com/bungo/bungo.html
http://www.classical-japanese.net/Grammar/index.html

Unrelated, if you want to see an example of the original text I'm working from, here's a picture of the first poem; I wrote the kana on the side, and for the 変体仮名 I put the original kanji in parentheses.
[Image: poem1.png]

Let's read the 百人一首 - nadiatims - 2011-12-27

How on earth did you figure out how to read that!?
half of it is just squiggles...

Let's read the 百人一首 - yudantaiteki - 2011-12-27

It's not easy. I have a little book that has examples of 崩し字 from a number of different historical manuscripts, and since I already know what this poem's text is, I can just look up the syllables in the book and see which kanji it is. I've been doing this with the 百人一首 and Genji but I'm nowhere near the point where I could just take a manuscript I had no idea about and figure out more than 50% of it.

Of course a lot of people say that the printed kana look like squiggles too, so it's just what you're used to. Smile

Let's read the 百人一首 - nadiatims - 2011-12-27

A lot of the time with calligraphic japanese I get the impression the writer is just being deliberately messy because it looks cool and even they wouldn't be able to read it after a while.

Let's read the 百人一首 - yudantaiteki - 2011-12-31

Poem 2

Text:
持統天皇御せい
春すきて夏きにけらし白たへの
ころもほすてふあまのかく山

春過ぎて haru sugi-te
夏来にけらし natu ki ni kerasi
白栲の sirotahe no
衣干すてふ koromo hosu tefu
天の香具山 ama no kaguyama

Notes:
春過ぎて: Classical Japanese (as well as colloquial modern Japanese) does not require any particle between a subject and predicate, or object and predicate (as seen in lines 1, 2, and 4).

来にけらし: This parses as ki (連用形 of ku) + ni (連用形 of the suffix ぬ, indicating completion) + kerasi, a contraction of keri and rasi. keri is a somewhat complicated suffix; in poetry it almost always indicates that the speaker is just noticing something that is already true or has occurred (sometimes called the “surprise” keri). rasi is more or less the same as modern らしい in this case. The meaning of the whole line is something like “It seems that summer is already here.” In contrast to the first poem, which was one sentence, the end of the second line is the end of a sentence. This is sometimes known as 二句切（にくぎり）. The remaining three lines are a modifier (line 3 and 4) for a noun (line 5); ending a poem with a noun in this manner is known as 体言止め（たいげんどめ）. It's particularly associated with poetry of the 新古今集 era (see below).

白栲の: This is a word literally representing a white tree, but also referring to white clothes woven from the bark of the tree, or simply the color white. In this case, the whole phrase is something called a 枕詞（まくらことば）. These phrases, almost always 5 mora, are used to fill out the meter of a poem and always connect to specific words – if you're familiar with Homeric poetry, it's similar to the “stock epithets” found in The Iliad and The Odyssey. They are most associated with poetry from the 万葉集 era, particularly the longer poems. In some cases the exact meanings of the 枕詞 are unknown or disputed. In this case the phrase is a 枕詞 for 衣 in the next line, although it's also possible to simply read it as the literal “white clothes” meaning.

衣干す: Modern Japanese still uses 干す with clothing to refer to hanging them out to dry. The 衣 here may be some sort of sacred garment associated with religious ceremonies on the mountain (although see the commentary section below).

てふ: This is a shortening of といふ (と言ふ) and is usually read as ちょう when the poem is read out loud now. This essentially is the same as modern という used to describe something, and means that the mountain is known as a place where clothes are dried. It may indicate that this is a legend about the mountain.

天の香具山: 天 in this case means “holy” or “heavenly”. The mountain is one of the so-called 大和三山. It is in modern-day 橿原市（かきわらし） in Nara-ken. The Japanese wikipedia article has more information and a picture. Aside from this poem, it is famous in poetry for Man'yoshu poem 2, in which Emperor Jomei stands on it to view the kingdom.

Translation: It seems that spring has passed and summer has already come. Holy Kaguya mountain, where it is said they dry white clothing.

Author: Empress Jito (645-702), the 41st Emperor in the traditional order of succession, and the daughter of Tenji. Unlike the previous poem, this poem originally appears in the 万葉集 attributed to Jito, making this poem's authenticity much more likely.

Source: 新古今和歌集 (shin kokin wakashu), the 8th imperial anthology and the last of the so-called 八大集. It appears there with the 詞書 of 題知らず, as with the previous poem. The poem was taken originally from the 万葉集, where it appears as poem 28 in a slightly different form (line 2 is 来（きた）るらし and line 4 is 衣干したり, したり being equivalent to the modern している or してある).
Teika himself was one of the compilers of the 新古今集. It took a number of poems from old sources like the Man'yoshu (which was not an imperially commissioned collection), especially when the poetic techniques seemed to match those in vogue at the time. The reason for the different form of the poem could be due to alternate methods of reading the 万葉仮名, or it could be because the compilers did not get the poem directly from the Man'yoshu but instead one of the later sources that drew from it.

Commentary:
The 体言止 technique has the effect of making the connection between the first 2 and last 3 lines less obvious. It seems to be here that the last three lines give the reason why the poet now sees that summer has come.
However, the exact link between the clothes drying and summer is a subject of debate, and even the exact meaning of 衣干す is a common topic of discussion in older commentaries. The surface, literal meaning is one possibility – this may be related to a change of clothing due to the change of seasons. Either this represents literally people living on the mountain drying their clothes, or it may refer to a legend where gods came down to the mountain to dry their white clothing.
Other commentaries, though, propose several other symbolic readings of the poem. One suggestion is that the flowers of the trees on the mountain look like white clothing drying. Another is that the mountain is veiled in mist in the spring, and once the mist clears in the summer you can see the mountain clearly (明白), thus using the drying white clothes as a symbol for that. Or, the mist on the mountain may be the white clothes themselves – in summer, the mountain has taken off its white robes and is drying them (after cleaning).

Let's read the 百人一首 - Hinode - 2012-01-05

Thanks for the second poem!
I feel like I'm starting to learn Japanese all over again... there's so much to learn (a bitter sweet realization). Smile

I'm still thinking about the best way to SRS these. It doesn't make much sense to add them line by line out of context... maybe I'll go for the vocab + explanation approach only and try to learn the poems without SRS.

If anyone has experience in this kind of direction (learning poems, or maybe lyrics?) I'd be glad to hear them!

Let's read the 百人一首 - yudantaiteki - 2012-01-06

I can't help you there...I never used SRS and I'm not really sure about good strategies. I also don't know if this would really be the best way to learn classical.

Let's read the 百人一首 - Eikyu - 2012-01-06

Thanks for the second poem.

Let's read the 百人一首 - mottles - 2012-01-08

Thanks for the efforts!

A couple comments/suggestions:

It would be great if you would keep posting pictures of the calligraphy!

Also, wouldn't it be more appropriate for the kanji transcriptions to be 旧字体 (especially since you're keeping 旧仮名遣い)?

Thanks.