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).
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).
Edited: 2011-12-25, 4:16 am