Poetry as Wordplay: Poem Number 22

The twenty-second poem in the Hyakunin Isshu is a brilliant example of word-play:

Japanese	Romanization	Translation
ふくからに	Fuku kara ni	As soon as it blows,
秋の草木の	Aki no kusaki no	the autumn trees and grasses
しをおるれば	Shiorureba	droop, and this must be why,
むべ山風を	Mube yama kaze o	quite rightly, the mountain wind
あらしといふうらむん	Arashi to iuran	is called “the ravager.”

Translation by Dr Joshua Mostow

This poem was composed by Fun’ya no Yasuhidé (文屋康秀, ? – 879?), but according to Mostow, it is known that he lived around the time Narihira (poem 17) and Sosei (poem 21). He is also one of the Six Immortals of Poetry. My new book points out that he was upper-sixth rank in the Imperial bureaucracy, a middling rank, so he was a somewhat minor official. And yet as a poet, he achieved great fame.

Yasuhide was also known for carrying on a tryst with Ono no Komachi (poem 9) and invited her to come away with on a retreat to Mikawa Province. She reportedly accepted the offer but other details of the story are unclear.

In any case, from the English translation, it’s hard to see what is so remarkable about this poem, until you look at the last two lines.

The fourth line talks about mountains 山 and wind 風, but the fifth line mentions the word arashi (あらし) which means “storm” and whose kanji (chinese character) is composed of both mountain and wind 嵐. It makes even more sense when you see it on karuta card (yomifuda) for this poem:

Circled in blue is the word arashi (あらし) using hiragana script, but in red are the Chinese characters for mountain and wind. When looked at closely, they also look like the Chinese character for arashi (嵐).

According to the Hyakunin Isshu Daijiten, this poetic method, called moji-asobi (文字遊び) is not limited to this poem, or even Japanese poetry. It appears to be a poetic method employed originally in China, and adopted by early Japanese poets. For example, in the first Imperial anthology, the Kokin Wakashu, you can find this poem by Ki no Tomonori (poem 33 in the Hyakunin Isshu):

Japanese	Romanization	Translation
雪降れば	Yuki fureba	Because the snow fell
木毎に花ぞ	Kigoto ni hana zo	White “blossoms”, one by one,
吹きにける	Fukinikeru	Sprout on the tree.
いづれを梅と	Izure wo ume to	How am I to tell the blossoms from the snow
わきて折らまし	Wakite oramashi	Without snapping them off?

Rough translation by me, based on Hyakunin Isshu Daijiten

Here, the word for plums (as well as plum blossoms), umé 梅, is made up of the Chinese characters 木 and 毎 which happen to appear on the second line of the poem.

Pretty clever, really.

In any case, the Hyakunin Isshu Daijiten and Professor Mostow both point out that the word arashi also has a double-meaning. The basic meaning is “storm”, but it is also the noun-form of the verb arasu meaning to ravage, hence the translation above: arashi (荒らし).

Amazing what people could do with a few lines of verse and some Chinese characters. It’s no surprise that the author, Fun’ya no Yasuhide, was counted among the original Six Immortals of Poetry and later the Thirty-Six Immortals.

P.S. Kind of been a while, good to be back. 🙂

P.P.S. Featured photo is a different “Arashi“, photo by Japanese Station, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons