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Audio: NHK Creative Library
Read by LibriVox volunteer Larry Wilson.
Audio courtesy of LibriVox (Public Domain).
文屋康秀
吹くからに
秋の草木の
しをるれば
むべ山風を
嵐といふらむ
むへやまか
せをあらし
といふらむ
ふ
- Poem 22
- 吹くからに
秋の草木の
しをるれば
むべ山風を 嵐といふらむ
Author: Fun'ya no Yasuhide (dates unknown)
Source: Kokin Wakashū, Autumn
- English Verse Translation
- The mountain wind in autumn time Is well called "hurricane"; It hurries canes and twigs along,
And whirls them o'er the plain To scatter them again.
— William N. Porter, 1909
- Modern Translation
- The moment the autumn wind blows, the grasses and trees wither. Now I understand why the mountain wind is called "arashi" — storm.
- Commentary
- This poem applies a technique borrowed from Chinese verse called rigōshi, which plays on splitting and recombining characters — here, the characters for "mountain" (山) and "wind" (風) combine to form the character for "storm" (嵐). Today "arashi" refers to a violent storm, but at the time it meant simply the wind blowing down from the mountains.
- About the Poet
- Fun'ya no Yasuhide was one of the leading poets of the Heian period, counted among the Six Poetic Sages. He is also known as the father of Fun'ya no Asayasu. His friendship with fellow Sage Ono no Komachi is well documented — when Yasuhide was posted to Mikawa Province as junior secretary, he asked Komachi to accompany him, and she replied with a poem comparing herself to a rootless floating weed, willing to drift along if a stream should invite her. Whether she actually went with him is not recorded, but the exchange shows the literary bond between the two.
- Fun'ya no Yasuhide's Chart of the Heart
-
A chart and a modern-language reflection of the poet's inner feelings.
The Poet's Feelings (A Personal Interpretation)
In the wind blowing down from the mountains,
the autumn grasses lose their color.
Ah — I see now why "mountain" and "wind"
together make "storm."
- Poem Illustration
-
This image is based on an illustration from William N. Porter's A Hundred Verses from Old Japan, his 1909 English translation of the Hyakunin Isshu published in England, colorized and reworked using Adobe Firefly (generative AI).