Spin & Discover Kakekotoba!
Poem 1: Emperor Tenji
Try to find the kakekotoba hidden in the poem and tap it.
The word you tap will spin right where it is, revealing its two meanings in turn.
秋の田の
かりほの庵の
苫をあらみ
我が衣手は
露にぬれつつ
Commentary
The word "kariho" is a kakekotoba.
A kakekotoba layers two meanings onto a single word that sounds the same either way.
Here, "kariho" carries both "刈り穂" (harvested ears of rice) and "仮庵" (a makeshift hut).
The image of rice freshly cut in the autumn fields overlaps with a farmer keeping watch through the night in a crude hut during harvest season — a single word opens onto a rich, layered scene.
Packing two scenes into just thirty-one syllables is exactly what makes kakekotoba so appealing.
Vocabulary
"Kariho" is a contraction of "kari" (temporary) + "io" (hut) — literally a "temporary hut," a crude shelter built to last only a short while.
A woven mat made from sedge (菅) or cogon grass (茅), used like a rough thatch.
Means "because it is rough." The suffix "~mi" attached to an adjective stem means "because it is ~."