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Fun'ya no Asayasu

Meaning

In the autumn fields lashed by the wind and dew, the scattered drops look like beads of jade that cannot be strung together.

Commentary

The image is exact and exquisite: the wind repeatedly sweeps across the dew-covered autumn fields, and the dewdrops roll off the blades of grass and scatter — like jewels falling loose when the thread that held them snaps. The dew becomes jewelry; the wind becomes the force that destroys the strand. Nothing could be more ephemeral, or more beautiful in its vanishing.

Fun'ya no Asayasu was the son of Fun'ya no Yasuhide (poem 22) and inherited his father's gift for vivid, concrete imagery. The comparison of dew to scattered jewels was a classical poetic convention of the period, but Asayasu employs it with exceptional precision and visual clarity. The poem appears in the Gosen Wakashū.

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