First Book of Spring
No. 1
在原元方
ふるとしに春たちける日よめる
Ariwara no Motokata
Composed on a day when spring arrived within the old year.
The poem plays on a discrepancy between the official lunar and the unofficial solar calendars. Risshun, the first day of spring by the solar calendar, always occurs on February 4 or 5th (by the Gregorian calendar). The New Year by the lunar calendar begins on the day of the the second new moon after the winter solstice, variably between mid-January and mid-February. Hence a little less than once every two years the (lunar) first day of spring preceded the (solar) New Year's day. The theme of "time out of joint" is pervasive in early classical waka, often (cf. Nos. 2 and 3, below) hinging upon a contrast between convention and perception. Some medieval exegetes took this poem as a compact allegory of the chiasmus of "old" and "new," alluding to the Kokinshu editors' apparent program of thoughtfully intercalating Old (late 8th and early to mid 9th c.)poems with New (late 9th to early 10th c.)
No. 2
紀貫之
はるたちける日よめる
Ki no Tsurayuki
Composed on "the first day of spring."
The topic calls for anticipation of spring, never soon enough (compare poems on the coming of autumn, by contrast almost always arriving sooner than expected). The theme is an implied contrast between the calendar, which has announced the arrival of spring and its warm breezes (through an allusion, perhaps, to the Chinese Book of Rites), and the conceit of sleeves wet with water from the previous year's summer still frozen with winter's cold. The promise of spring remains unfulfilled but by taking the compass of three successive seasons the poet affirms his faith in the calendar.
No. 3
よみ人しらず
題しらず
Anonymous
Topic unknown
The topic is lingering snow. The sequence has established the arrival, by the calendar, of spring.Yoshino, with mountains among the deepest in the Yamato region and the vicinity of the capital, was a "poem pillow" (utamakura) noted both for heavy snowfall and for cherry blossoms. The poet complains (complaint is among the prevailing moods of Kokinshu poetry) that despite the official arrival of spring, the mists (much less the flowers) of spring have yet to appear.
No. 35
よみ人しらず
題しらず
Anonymous
Topic unknown
In the context of its presumed source, the personal collection of Fujiwara no Kanesuke (d. 933), this is a love poem sent to a woman facetiously complaining that incense, redolent of apricot (or plum) blossoms, burnt to scent her robes, has infused his own, and that their relationship has thus been discovered by members of his household. That his complaint is facetious is attested by the evidence that he sent this poem to the woman (who knows better) by way of stating his intention not to be dissuaded. The editors of Kokinshu signal their intentions to reread this as a poem on "plum blossoms," not love, by placing it as an anonymous poem obliquely praising the seductive depth of the scent of the blossoms, in support of the poet's claim to have lingered only briefly.
Second Book of Spring
No. 69
よみ人しらず
題しらず
Anonymous
Topic unknown
Mist and cherry blossoms are the preeminent images of spring. The placement of this poem at the beginning of the Second Book of Spring asserts that the imminent fading of the blossoms, perhaps showing through a screen of (faint pink, by Chinese poetic convention) mist, marks the passage beyond the midpoint of the season and thus appropriately opens the second movement of spring. This is the first of a sequence of 21 poems on the topic falling cherry blossoms. (Concerning the importance of topical sequences in Kokinshu, refer to the note on No. 223, below.)
No. 70
よみ人しらず
題しらず
Anonymous
Topic unknown
In the context of Kokinshu the question is best taken rhetorically: It is because the blossoms are bound to fall soon that they are so admired (cf. No. 71). If one could command them, with a word, to last, their fragile beauty would be diminished. In an earlier context the (presumably late 8th or early 9th c.) anonymous poet's intention may have been, on the contrary, to suggest that if only the blossoms would stay, per demand, nothing could surpass their beauty. Such a reading, though grammatically less plausible, is accepted by some medieval and modern commentators. One early Edo period commentator, Kigin (d. 1705), suggests that an ideal reader might well hesitate to choose.
No. 71
よみ人しらず
題しらず
Anonymous
Topic unknown
"Without regret" (nokori naku), literally "leaving nothing behind," implies utter detachment from the world. This is a statement of what was to become the normative esthetic and ethos of the cherry blossom as symbol of the fragility of beauty (and the beauty of fragility): better to die early than linger in this world and suffer the consequences, among them an awareness of the vanity of human aspirations and of the futility of living on. (An implicit exception is that to have left a poem such as this one, if anonymously, is not to have lived in vain.)
No. 72
よみ人しらず
題しらず
Anonymous
Topic unknown
Entranced by clouds of falling blossoms, a traveller has lost track of the way home and is resigned to spending the night in an unfamiliar village. The poem suggests that the beauty of the blossoms is not an altogether benign force. (Compare the verse by Izumi Shikibu, "...the [cherry] blossoms, indeed, are shackles to this world," or the hokku by Sobaku [d. 1821]: "All the cherry blossoms / I saw today / weighing me down.")
No. 73
よみ人しらず
題しらず
Anonymous
Topic unknown
The phrase utsusemi no yo ("this fleeting world") in 9th century usage and after, with its image of the discarded shell of a cicada, refers to this world of (human) existence as empty and insubstantial, hence meaningless, or as mutable and ephemeral. The force of the simile in this poem draws on the second sense.
No. 103
ありはらのもとかた
寛平御時きさいの宮のうたあはせのうた
Ariwara no Motokata
From the Empress's Poetry Contest of the Kanpyo Era
A long sequence (41 poems) on cherry blossoms blooming and falling, extending from the latter part of the first book of spring through the beginning of the second book, is followed by two shorter sequences on the topics blossoming flowers and falling flowers. These are poems on late spring flowers (which may or may not include mountain cherries and late-blooming cherry trees). This poem concludes the sequence blossoming flowers. (Cf. No. 69 on the conjunction of images of spring mist and flowers.)
No. 104
みつね
うつろへる花を見てよめる
Mitsune
Composed when looking at fading blossoms
This is the first in the sequence of poems on falling flowers. The speaker seems to fear something we are told Heian poets took some pride in: a reputation for extreme sensitivity.
No. 105
よみ人しらず
題しらず
Anonymous
Topic unknown
Under the topic falling flowers this is the first of a sub-sequence of 6 verses on warblers lamenting the blossoms. The speaker, visiting flowers in meadows where trees are in bloom, finds that in each meadow, warblers are crying, and the wind is blowing petals from the boughs, and infers the relation between the two events. The sense, ambiguous in the text as in the translation, is thus not that the speaker was drawn by the warblers' cries to seek their cause. As one late 15th century commentary ("Kobun") states the matter, the difference between these two readings is slight, but it is upon slight differences that the beauty (yugen) of such poems depends.
No. 107
典侍洽子朝臣
題しらず
Naishi Ameneiko no Ason
Topic unknown
Compare this to No. 70, above. On another reading, the poet would be asking whether, if crying were enough to stop the blossoms' falling, she would cry no less plaintively than the warbler.
Book of Summer
No. 135
よみ人しらず
題しらず
このうた、ある人のいはく、かきのもとの人まろが也
Anonymous
Topic unknown
Some say this poem was composed by Kakinomoto Hitomaro.
The topic is early summer. The flowers of the garden are mirrored in the surface of the pond, their reflection perhaps superimposed on waves raised by an early summer breeze. The mountain cuckoo, hototogisu, is the dominant image of the brief book of summer in Kokinshu, appearing in 25 of the 34 poems and associated, in Kokinshu and after, with the 5th and 6th months of the lunar calendar. Summer begins in the 4th month, and the cuckoo has not yet begun to sing. Wisteria blossoms are a late spring / early summer image. One Nijo School commentary of the late 15th century urges the reader to understand that "It's not now that the wisteria is in bloom, I'm longing for the cuckoo to complement the flowers with its voice,' but yes, now it's summer, and the wisteria is in bloom; might the cuckoo come before long and sing?'"
No. 152
みくにのまち
題しらず
Mikuni no Machi
Topic unknown
The cuckoo was thought, like other birds in many traditional cultures, to act as a messenger between this and other worlds. The intended recipient of the message here may be one who has entered the afterworld, since the cuckoo was also believed to be an intermediary between the living and the dead, or a recluse who has departed from this mundane world to practice austerities in the mountains, the proper abode of the Mountain Cuckoo (yama-hototogisu) addressed in the poem.
First Book of Autumn
No. 172
よみ人しらず
題しらず
Anonymous
Topic unknown
The implied topic is autumn wind. One prevalent theme of early autumn poems, those of the opening of the first autumn book of Kokinshu and others later in the classical tradition, is surprise at how quickly and stealthily the season arrives. Surprise is registered here by hyperbole: only a day ago, so it seems, the rice seedlings were planted, yet today they are ready for harvesting. The word soyogite, (translated here as "tremble") is at least partly an onomatopoeia of susurration which lacks a good English equivalent.
No. 176
よみ人しらず
題しらず
Anonymous
Topic unknown
The topic is tanabata, the festival of the Oxherd and the Weaver, lovers who were transformed into the stars Altair and Vega in the Milky Way (River of Heaven) and condemned to meet only one night in the year, the 7th of the 7th lunar month. Autumn mist, kiri, a strongly seasonal image, is the counterpart of spring mist or haze (kasumi). The implied speaker may be either of the two stars or both.
No. 222
よみ人しらず
題しらず
ある人のいはく、この哥はならのみかどの御哥なりと
Anonymous
Topic unknown
Some say that this poem was composed by the Nara Emperor.
The mitate (visual metaphor) of dew drops as evanescent jewels is a familiar one. Dew is closely associated with the bush clover, hagi, a distinctive autumn flower.
No. 223
よみ人しらず
題しらず
Anonymous
Topic unknown
Sequences (shidai) of poems on the same topic, composed of subtle variations in thematic treatment, are the building blocks which make Kokinshu a coherent and readable text rather than a simple collection of poems arranged topically. Medieval commentators devoted considerable attention to the designs underlying the editors' composition of such sequences (prominent in the seasonal and love books), which come into view only when one poem is read as a response to a preceding poem or series of poems. In this instance, the reader is invited to reread No. 222 against 223 and weigh the differences between a conceit and a more literal treatment of the same topic, gem-like droplets of dew on leaves or petals of bush clover.
Second Book of Autumn
No. 256
つらゆき
いしやまにまうでける時、おとは山のもみぢを見てよめる
Ki no Tsurayuki
On seeing autumn leaves on Otowa Mountain while visiting Ishiyama
The name of Otowa Mountain, a pillow word, affords a pun on the word oto meaning "sound." This is the eighth of a series of 19 poems on the topic autumn leaves which opens the second book of autumn. Autumn leaves is also the dominant image of the latter part of the season, appearing in more than half of the poems in the book. The poem suggests (cf. No. 172), retrospectively, the idea of nature anticipating the calendar (cf. No. 3 and many other spring poems in which the season is perceived as falling behind the calendar).
No. 257
としゆきの朝臣
これさだのみこの家の哥合によめる
Toshiyuki no Ason
Composed for a Poetry Contest at the House of Prince Koresada
The theory underlying this and the following poems is that dew drops (together with frost and raindrops of cold autumn showers) are the cause of the coloration of leaves. "White dew" is often a near synonym for "dew" but the specific association of autumn with the color white (following Chinese theories of the "five elements") is exploited here to underscore the paradox. The "thousand shades" is a conventional hyperbole. The primary colors of autumn foliage in classical poetry were red, yellow and rust.
No. 258
壬生忠岑
Mibu no Tadamine
(Composed for a Poetry Contest at the House of Prince Koresada)
Again the theory that dew causes the leaves to turn is invoked. The conceit is that because the wild geese, flying south in autumn, cry they must shed tears, and that since tears are a poetic homologue of dew, those (figurative) tears might combine forces with the dew to intensify the coloration of the grasses of the fields.
No. 259
よみ人しらず
題しらず
Anonymous
Topic unknown
This, a variation on the theme of No. 257, is also a tentative response to that poem's question: it must be something in the way that dew settles on the leaves that accounts for its varied effects: leaves of differing colors.
No. 266
よみ人しらず
是貞のみこの家の哥合のうた
Anonymous
Composed for a Poetry Contest at the House of Prince Koresada
This is the penultimate poem in the sequence of 19 poems on the topic autumn leaves (momiji) which opens the second book of autumn. This sequence is followed by 13 poems on chrysanthemum flowers, but the topic of momiji is then resumed under the rubric falling leaves (rakuyo) in a 25 poem sequence which extends till nearly the end of the book. A parallel is thus established between the sequential arrangement of poems on cherry blossoms in the two books of spring, and these on autumn leaves.
No. 274
とものり
菊の花のもとにて人の人まてるかたをよめる
Tomonori
Composed of a figure of a person waiting, beside chrysanthemum blossoms, for another person
An allusion to a verse by the Chinese poet Tao Qian (d. 427), cited by early Kamakura commentators, may have been intended here, but as Muromachi exegetes affiliated with the Nijo School (the renga poet Sogi and his teacher To no Joen) asserted, recogniton of the allusion adds nothing to an understanding of the poem within the Kokinshu context. The "figure" mentioned in the headnote is most likely a model placed on a tray of sand representing, in miniature, a landscape.
No. 284
よみ人しらず
題しらず
Anonymous
Topic unknown
A variant text reads "Asuka River is flush with red leaves..."
Mimuro, a noun meaning "sacred grove" or "dwelling place of the gods," became the name of mountainous area which was the site of Tatsuta Shrine, above the Tatsuta River. Kamunabi (mountains "where gods dwell") refers to the same area, noted for autumn leaves. The poet speculates on the unseen cause of a very visible (and desirable) effect: a brocade of red and yellow leaves covering the Tatsuta River, downstream from Mimuro.
No. 289
よみ人しらず
題しらず
Anonymous
Topic unknown
A rhetorical question, perhaps: the speaker asks why the autumn moon casts its light so starkly (sayaka) and proposes an answer: that the moon's intention is to intensify our perception of the falling of leaves and thus of the passage of the season towards winter. It is not "fallen leaves" but "leaves (now) falling" which the speaker sees so clearly. Such distinctions (some of them obscured by the ambiguities of Heian grammar) often mark the differences which lend a poem its force.
No. 290
よみ人しらず
題しらず
Anonymous
Topic unknown
A familiar mitate (visual metaphor), autumn leaves seen as a cloak of brocade, dresses another well-worn trope, the wind making itself visible, to create something new. Many of the "New" poems of Kokinshu, those of the late 9th and early 10th c., are based on permutations and recombinations of rhetorical precedents rather than on the invention of unfamiliar conceits.
No. 291
ふぢはらのせきを
題しらず
Sekio
Topic unknown
Frost and dew are taken to be the agents causing the autumn leaves to turn (cf. No. 257 above), and to weave from them a multicolored brocade. "Scatter" (chiru) refers to the falling of the leaves.
No. 297
つらゆき
北山に紅葉をらむとてまかれりける時によめる
Ki no Tsurayuki
Composed during a visit to the northern hills to pluck autumn leaves
The poem alludes to a passage in the biography of Xiang Yu in the Han Shu ―― "to achieve wealth and glory, and not return to one's native village, is like wearing brocades by night" ―― which became proverbial for something done to no effect, or an advantage put to no good.
No. 305
みつね
亭子院の御屏風のゑに、河わたらむとする人のもみぢのちる木のもとにむまをひかへてたてるをよませたまひければつかうまつりける
Mitsune
Composed and presented in response to imperial command for a folding screen at Teiji-In depicting a person standing beneath falling autumn leaves, beside a halted horse, about to ford a river.
This is the last of a sequence of 25 poems on falling leaves, and one of three poems in that sequence which were composed for screen paintings (byobu-uta). As medieval commentators noted apropos such poems in Kokinshu, the poet was generally expected to assume the point of view of a figure in the painting when composing a poem such as this one.
No. 306
ただみね
是貞のみこの家の哥合のうた
Tadamine
Composed for a Poetry Contest at the House of Prince Koresada
The topic is autumn fields. Cf. No. 258 for a similar troping of dew to the tears of birds. In this poem, the dew on the hut or its roof is a mitate for such tears. The "rice-bearing bird" (inaoose-dori), the identity of which was debated in early commentaries, became one of the "Three Birds" of the "Secret Teachings of Kokinshu," a knowledge of which was requisite to formal recognition as a waka poet throughout most of the medieval and early Edo periods.
Book of Travel
No. 409
よみ人しらず
題しらず
このうたは、ある人のいはく、柿本人麿が哥也
Anonymous
Topic unknown
Some say that this poem was composed by Kakinomoto no Hitomaro.
Passage into Akashi Bay meant crossing the official gateway at Settsu from the Inner to the Outer Provinces, and the implied topic is border-crossing. This is one of the most often quoted and allegorically glossed poems of Kokinshu, and became one of a core of poems treated as having profoundly esoteric meanings within the "Secret Teachings of Kokinshu." Its reputation was enhanced, certainly, by the attribution to Hitomaro, venerated as one of the deities of the Way of Poetry. One Nijo School commentary suggests that the poem, generally taken as an allegory of the death of Prince Takechi, was deliberately placed by the editors in the book of travel rather than in that of mourning to free it from taboos attaching to poems of mourning.
Second Book of Love
No. 571
よみ人しらず
（寛平御時きさいの宮の哥合のうた）
Anonymous
(From the Empress's Poetry Contest of the Kanpyo Era)
The speaker asks whether despair at unrequited love might cause her (or his?) soul to depart from her body, leaving a reputation for having lived for nothing more than vain affection. The auxilliary particle of causation, kara, imposes, in the context, an indecorous but irresistible pun on the noun kara meaning empty shell or corpse. Some medieval commentaries responded by suggesting that the reader should hold the double entendre in mind without letting it obtrude on the "surface" of the poem.
No. 572
紀つらゆき
題しらず
Ki no Tsurayuki
(From the Empress's Poetry Contest of the Kanpyo Era)
The topic, as in the previous poem, is unrequited love. The poem extends the familiar conceit that tears can quench the flames of longing. Within the scope of Kokinshu love poetry, the passion of unrequited love typically leads to resentment and tears of blood. This would appear to be an exception.
Third Book of Love
No. 635
をののこまち
題しらず
Ono no Komachi
Topic unknown
In the vocabulary of classical poetry, which often (as in this case) conforms to the prescriptions of the calendar, autumn nights are defined as increasingly longer than those of summer. Not long enough for love, however: the complaint is that the reality fails to live up to the name (reputation).
No. 636
凡河内みつね
題しらず
Mitsune
Topic unknown
Mitsune is quoted here as seconding Komachi's judgement in the previous poem, and makes explicit that the length of an autumn night is entirely relative.
No. 637
よみ人しらず
題しらず
Anonymous
Topic unknown
From the "night" of the previous poems the time advances to morning (shinonome refers to the moments just before dawn), and the topic here and in the following series of poems is parting at dawn (kinuginu). Kinuginu (literally, robes, with the sense of "these robes and those") refers to the custom of lovers sharing the clothes they were dressed in to use as bedding for the night, then separating their respective robes in the morning before parting.
No. 638
藤原国経朝臣
題しらず
Fujiwara no Kunitsune no Ason
Topic unknown
This and the two poems below continue the theme of parting at dawn, which extends through a sequence of about 12 verses.
No. 639
としゆきの朝臣
寛平御時きさいの宮の哥合のうた
Toshiyuki no Ason
From the Empress's Poetry Contest of the Kanpyo Era
The confusion of tears and rainfall was a cliche, but the poet renews it with the use of uncommon diction, kokitarete ("drenched"), and a pivot making both rain and tears the subjects of the same verb, furisohochi (literally, to fall and soak through).
No. 640
寵
題しらず
Utsuku
Topic unknown
The arrival of dawn, conventionally announced by the crowing of a rooster, means that the lover who has been visiting for the night must depart, all too early. Anticipating the bird's cry with her own, the speaker invokes a contrast between the implacability of time (and of convention) and the depth of her feelings.
No. 645
よみ人しらず
業平朝臣の伊勢のくににまかりたりける時、斎宮なりける人にいとみそかにあひて、又のあしたに人やるすべなくて思ひをりけるあひだに、女のもとよりおこせたりける
Anonymous
When Narihira visited the province of Ise, he met, in secrecy, the person who was serving as the High Priestess. The next morning, before he was able to find a way to send her a message, this poem was delivered from the woman.
No. 646
なりひらの朝臣
返し
Narihira
Reply
Fifth Book of Love
No. 797
小野小町
題しらず
Ono no Komachi
Topic unknown
On an equally plausible affirmative reading of the ambiguous verb miete, the same poem might be translated:
The wording of the poem affords two logically opposed readings, depending on whether the verb "to be visible" is taken affirmatively (miete) or negatively (miede), a question the script in which Kokinshu was recorded leaves undecided. A majority of commentators, medieval and modern, have preferred the direct irony of the negative reading reflected in the first of the two translations above. Others have argued in favor the more subtly ironic affirmative reading. A small minority suggest that the miete /miede crux is to be taken as a pun (kakekotoba), inviting the reader to suspend judgement between the two contrary readings and entertain the possibility that both may be true at once.
Book of Mourning
No. 832
かむつけのみねを
［ほりかはのおほきおほいまうち君、身まかりにける 時に、深草の山にをさめてけるのちによみける］
Kamutsuke no Mineo
Composed after the Horikawa Chancellor died and his remains were interred near Mount Fukakusa
The belief that cherry trees are animate and sentient beings, invoked frequently in classical waka (and in Noh drama), likely drew force from folk-religious cults of cherry trees as local deities (cf. the Druidic tree-worship cults which gave rise to Christmas tree rites) and further support from syncretic Tendai doctrines of universal Buddha-mind. The apostrophe in this poem, addressed to the cherry trees, can thus be taken literally; not, that is, as prosopopoeia. This does not diminish the extremity of the conceit of black blossoms, calculated to convey the burden of the speaker's grief.
Second Book of Miscellaneous Topics
No. 947
そせい
題しらず
Sosei
Topic unknown
The poems gathered in the two Books of Miscellaneous Topics are indeed diverse. A few, at the beginning of the first book, are celebratory, but the majority dwell on themes of disappointment, mortality, and loss. The speaker in this poem by the eminent cleric and gifted poet Sosei complains of a double bind: the imperative to flee the corruptive influences of civilization and seek detachment in the purity of the pastoral' is undermined by the (eminently civilized) delights of nature――the motifs of the seasonal topics of waka are implied――which prove to be no less a distraction from the path towards ascetic withdrawal.
No. 981
よみ人しらず
題しらず
Anonymous
Topic unknown
This and the three following poems, on the topic dwellings, were treated within the medieval esoteric teachings as among a number of densely allegorical poems uttered by deities or immortals and framed as lessons based on syncretic Shinto-Buddhist and proto-nativist doctrine. In the sequence here, the poems were understood, on one level, as lamenting the moral corruption of society (metaphorically suggested here by the anticipated ruin of "my old home") which has forced the gods and their Buddhist avatars to manifest themselves in the world and set things right.
No. 982
よみ人しらず
題しらず
Anonymous
Topic unknown
No. 983
きせんほうし
題しらず
Monk Kisen
Topic unknown
No. 984
よみ人しらず
題しらず
Anonymous
Topic unknown
Book of Miscellaneous Forms (Haikai)
No. 1015
凡河内みつね
題しらず
Mitsune
Topic unknown
This was likely meant as a parody of Komachi's poem on the same topic (No. 635, above). Poets of the late Heian era and after were puzzled by the term haikai (by which the editors of Kokinshu probably meant "dissonant" poems using archaic or colloquial diction, or obtrusive, vaguely grotesque conceits), with good reason, since a fair number of poems not placed in the haikai section are similar to poems such as this one. What marks this poem as haikai is the somewhat colloquial diction, not the topic or its treatment.
No. 1038
よみ人しらず
題しらず
Anonymous
Topic unknown
This could just as well be "the one who says he loves me." It is not the diction so much as the conceit which marks this poem as haikai. The premise is that promises of love invite suspicion and, too often, lead to resentment. The phrase "poems of resentment" (urami no uta) became a synonym for "poems of love" (koi no uta) early in the classical waka tradition. Compare the poem in the 15th episode of Tales of Ise for a somewhat more decorous variation on the same conceit:
"Shinobu," reputedly the name of a mountain in what is now Fukushima prefecture and a "poem pillow," is also a verb meaning to endure, conceal, long for, remember, and more.
Selected Poems from Kokin Wakashu
by Lewis Cook
The following selection of poems in translation from Kokin wakashu (Collection of Ancient and Modern Poems) is designed to convey some sense of how the anthology was read during the six or seven centuries throughout which it was regarded by Japanese poets as the primary canon of waka poetry. The emphasis is on poems which were most often quoted and re-cited, and on samples of sequences of poems on the preeminent topics: cherry blossoms, autumn leaves, and love.
Many of the finest poems in the anthology draw their force from complex word-play and thus resist translation. This selection is biased in favor of poems the effects of which can at least be approximated in English verse. One of the dilemmas imposed by the translation of Japanese poetry is whether or not to attempt an imitation of the quantitative meter of the originals, based entirely on syllable count, or to accept the accentual-syllabic meters of English. I have had no qualms about choosing the latter course.
The text on which the translations and transliterations are based is the "Date Family" recension by Fujiwara Teika, available online at the Japanese Text Initiative.
I have generally followed the Shin Nihon Koten Bungaku Taikei edition (Arai and Kojima, eds.; Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten,1989) for the identification of topics and topical sequences.
Macrons are omitted from the commentary. Long vowels are represented phonetically in the romanized transliterations.