A mountain village grows lonesome every winter when people and grasses grow scarce.山里は | yamazato wa |
冬ぞさびしさ | fuyu zo sabishisa |
まさりける | masarikeru |
人目も草も | hitome mo kusa mo |
かれぬ思えば | karenu omoeba |
Lord Minamoto no Muneyuki
Minamoto no Muneyuki 源宗于 (?−939) was a poet of the Kokinshū 古今集 (Collection from Ancient and Modern Times; 905) age and a contemporary of the said anthology’s compilers.
He was a grandson of Emperor Kōkō (光孝天皇 Kōkō tennō; 830−887; Hyakunin Isshu 15) and the Tōin Empress (洞院后 Tōin no kisaki, born Princess Hanshi [also pronounced as Nakako, 班子女王 Hanshi [Nakako] joō]; 833−900); son of their twelfth son Imperial Prince Koretada (是忠親王 Koretada shinnō; 857−922). But as was often the case, he was lowered to commoner status and bestowed a Minamoto 源 name, thus making him a court official like countless other nobles.
Muneyuki rose to Lower Grade of Senior Fourth Rank (正四位下 shōshii ge) and position of Master of the Right Capital Office (右京大夫 Ukyō no daibu), but his low rank was a source of personal disappointment. An episode in Yamato monogatari 大和物語 (Tales of Yamato) relates Muneyuki’s poetic appeal to [his uncle!] Emperor Uda (宇多天皇 Uda tennō; 867−931; reigned 887−897), which remained misunderstood and so Muneyuki never rose above the aforementioned rank and position.
Nevertheless, Muneyuki was an active poet worthy of imperial anthologies, and as such he is remembered. His personal collection Muneyuki Shū 宗于集 (Collected Poems of Mineyuki) records poetic correspondence with Ki no Tsurayuki 紀貫之 (866 or 872−954; Hyakunin Isshu 35), while a personal collection of poetess Ise 伊勢 (around 875−938; Hyakunin Isshu 19) Ise Shū 伊勢集 (Collected Poems of Lady Ise) also records poems received from Muneyuki. His poetry is included in imperial collections, with six of poems in Kokinshū, another three in Gosenshū 後撰集 (Later Collection; 953), and a further six in later imperial collections. He was also named as one of Fujiwara no Kintō’s 藤原公任 (966–1041; Hyakunin Isshu 55) Thirty Six Poetic Immortals (三十六歌仙 Sanjūrokkasen).
A mountain village
Muneyuki’s poem in the Hyakunin Isshu comes from Kokinshū, where it is included among winter poems and preceded by a headnote: composed as a winter poem. Presumably, this points to one of the enduring poetic debates: whether autumn or winter is sadder; and Muneyuki’s poem implies that it is winter.
The element of loneliness is particularly pronounced in the poem and highlighted by numerous techniques that add to poem’s complexity but do not take away from its superb fluidity.
In the first line, yamazato wa (a mountain village), Muneyuki uses a contrastive wa to highlight a mountain village (yamazato) as a contrast to the capital, which is only implied. In the second and third lines, fuyu zo sabishisa / masarikeru, the particle zo emphasises fuyu (winter), and the following sabishisa masarikeru states that it is all the more lonely and cold. Here, the sabishisa of classical Japanese can be seen as carrying two of its meanings − lonely and cold, therefore implying both the human emotion and the coldness of winter.
The motifs of humans and nature are continued in the final lines as well. In the fourth line, hitome mo kusa mo (and people, and grasses), hitome is used unconventionally, but to a great effect. In this poem, hitome is taken to mean simply people, visitors, but more conventionally the word refers to the prying eyes of strangers and public opinions. The effect of using hitome in the fourth line becomes obvious in the fifth line, karenu to omoeba, where karenu is a kakekotoba 掛詞 or a pivot word, carrying a double meaning. When it refers to hitome (people, visitors), karenu uses a verb karu 離る(to grow distant), and when it refers to kusa (grasses), it uses a verb karu 枯る (to wither). Both verbs have the same ren’yōkei 連用形 or continuative form − kare, − which here attaches auxiliary verb nu, indicating completion of an action, and thus allows for a perfectly grammatical double meaning and the parallel between humans and nature.
The very end of the poem, to omoeba, shows that everything preceding it in the fourth and fifth lines is a reflection: when/because I think that... But combining omou (to think) in izenkei 已然形 (perfective form, omoe) and then adding to that a reason-denoting ba does not signal the end of the poem or a sentence. Because the poem employs inversion and it is not the end. The final two lines are the grammatical beginning of the poem, while the third line, masarikeru, is the grammatical end. There, keru is used in rentaikei 連体形 or attributive form, which in this case signals the end of a sentence, as it is bound by the emphasizing zo in the second line fuyu zo sabishisa.
Through inversion, Muneyuki is able to achieve a greater effect, emphasising the loneliness of a village in winter in the first half and putting together an elegant argument in the second. But while he employs numerous techniques, the fluidity of the poem does not suffer and therefore Muneyuki is able to present a beautiful and flowing, exceptionally lonely image of winter in a closed off mountain village:
In a mountain village,
indeed winter is still
lonelier and colder, −
as I think that so have people’s visits, so have grasses
grown few and far between.
When Muneyuki composed his poem, mountain villages were seen as places that remained lonely throughout the year, and the poet went on to say that they were the loneliest in winter. But by the time of the Hyakunin Isshu compilation, these same villages came to be seen as quiet places of exceptional natural beauty, and therefore this poem as well could have come to be read as if singing of the hidden beauty accessible only to those in the lonely villages.