Hyakunin Isshu: Meet the Poets
Fujiwara no Kiyosuke Ason

Meaning

If I live on long enough, perhaps even these painful days will become dear to me, as something I once longed to leave behind.

Commentary

The poem reflects on how time transforms perception. Something once painful becomes, in retrospect, precious. The speaker projects this pattern forward: even these current difficult days will one day be remembered with nostalgia. The logical structure is elegant and philosophically rich — time redeems what it has wounded.

Fujiwara no Kiyosuke was a prominent scholar-poet who rose to prominence relatively late in life. He wrote extensively on waka poetics, leaving important works on the theory and history of waka. His father was Fujiwara no Akisuke (poem 79), and their relationship was reportedly strained — perhaps lending personal weight to this meditation on retrospective affection.

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