University of Virginia Library

The Tanabata Festival, of Chinese origin, is still celebrated in Japan on the seventh day of the seventh month. Bamboo branches are decorated with five-colored streamers and with slips on which poems have been written commemorating the lovers' meeting of the two stars.

From some lines by PoChu-i included in the Wakan Roei Shū, no. 204: "Who could have arranged things so well? The sighing cool wind and my thinning locks at once announce autumn is here." A parallel is drawn between the coming of autumn in the world and the coming of autumn to the person, evidenced by the thinning locks.

Many poets wrote in Chinese, especially on formal occasions, but the Japanese preferred their own language for their intimate feelings.

The above three lines are based on a poem by the Consort Itsukinomiya in the Shuishū, no. 451.

Derived from an anonymous poem in Chinese found in a commentary to the historical work Hyakurensho.

Quoted, with slight modifications, from the preface to the Kokinshū.

Also from the preface to the Kokinshū.

This is the "Naniwazu" poem: "In Naniwa Harbor/ The flowers have come to the trees;/ They slept through the winter,/ But now it is the spring—/ See how the blossoms have opened!" The preface to the Kokinshū characterizes this poem and the one on Asakayama, Mount Asaka, as the "father and mother of poetry." Both poems are given considerable attention in The Reed Cutter.

The poem was traditionally supposed to have been composed to encourage the future Emperor Nintoku, who reigned in the fourth century A.D., to accept the throne.

The poem runs, literally: "Mount Asaka—/ Its reflection appears In the mountain spring/ That is not shallow, and of you/ My thoughts are not shallow either." The Prince of Kazuraki was sent to the distant province of Mutsu where he was badly received by the governor. He was so angry that he refused to eat, but the governor's daughter cheered him by offering saké and reciting this poem.

Based on lines from the Kokinshū preface: "Though you count up my love you could never come to the end, not even if you could count every grain of sand on the shore of the wild sea."

An anonymous poem, no. 1110 in the Kokinshū.

So stated in the preface to the Kokinshū.

An early Heian poet, one of the "Six Immortals of Poetry," The explanation of the "Wretched that I am" poem was traditional.

From poem no. 757 in the Kokinshū, by Komachi.

A poem by Abe no Kiyoyuki, no. 556 in the Kokinshū.

The first part of a poem by Komachi, no. 552 in the Kokinshū. The last two lines run: "If I had known it was a dream/ I should never have wakened."

These lines are based on verses by Po Chü-i, no. 291 in the Wakan Rōei Shū.

A poem by Komachi, no. 850 in the Shinkokinshū.

This description is based on a passage in the Tamatsukuri Komachi Sosuisho, a work in Chinese, apparently by a Buddhist priest of the Heian period, describing Komachi's decline and her eventual salvation.

The appraisal of Komachi's poetry given in the preface to the Kokinshū.

The name of a gagaku dance, Manzairaku.

A reference to a poem by Oe no Masafusa in the collection Horikawa-in Ontoki Hyakushu Waka: "This world where I have dwelt a hundred years lodged in a flower is the dream of a butterfly." The poem in turn refers to a famous passage in Chuang Tzu. See The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu (New York, 1968), translated by Burton Watson, p. 49.

Hazukashi, the name of a wood near Kyoto, also has the meaning "ashamed."