Spin & Discover Kakekotoba!
Poem 13: Retired Emperor Yōzei
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.
筑波嶺の
峰より落つる
みなの川
こひぞつもりて
淵となりぬる
Commentary
The word "kohi" is a kakekotoba.
A kakekotoba layers two meanings onto a single word that sounds the same either way.
Here, "kohi" carries both "恋" (love) and an old word for "water," also read "kohi."
Just as the water of the Mina River, tumbling down from the peak of Mount Tsukuba, gradually gathers into a deep pool, so too has the poet's love for someone gathered and grown, until it has become just as deep.
The scene of river water collecting into a pool is layered onto the poet's ever-deepening feelings of love.
Packing two meanings into just thirty-one syllables is exactly what makes kakekotoba so appealing.
Vocabulary
Another name for Mount Tsukuba, in present-day Ibaraki Prefecture.
A river with its source on Mount Tsukuba, also written "Minano-gawa" (男女川).
There is a theory that "kohi" is an old word for "water." Shigeharu (Shihō) Satō's Ogura Hyakushu Hyōshaku: An English-German Bilingual Edition (Hongō Shoin, December 1904) notes that in this poem, "kohi" is either the old word for water or refers to love (恋).
Source: National Diet Library Digital Collections (https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/872971), frame 36.
Piling up — describes how the poet's love keeps building.
A place where a river's water runs deep and still.