Member Poem

This poem is attributed to the Emperor Tenji in the famous 1235 AD anthology of Japanese poetry, One Hundred People, One Verse Each, but it is unlikely to have actually been written by him and is more likely taken from a folk song. Like all Japanese poems at the time, it is written in tanka form, with syllables following 5-7-5-7-7 pattern.

There are different interpretations of the poem, but mine is that it tells the story of a peasant working the field, taking occasional refuge in a skimpy hut, wiping away the tears from his hard life on his sleeve. Another is that the speaker is all alone is his ramshackle hut in the fields, away from his love, making his sleeves wet with tears.

Autumn in the field,

At harvest, my hut is a

Coarse-roofed hermitage.

And my sleeves,

Wet with dew.

aki no ta no

kariho no io no

toma wo arami

waga koromode wa

tsuyu ni nuretsutsu

Autumn’s field’s

Hut’s(1)  hermitage’s

Thatched roof is crude

My sleeve

Of dew(2) becomes wet