Analysis of a few Kokinshu love poems:

Love. Let’s analyze it, specifically in poems. Poems today written for love are usually cheap things found inside greeting cards. Their convenient, quick, and no thought is required in picking one up and handing them over to a lover. Just sign you name and away you go.

It wasn’t like that in Japan.

Or, correction: it wasn’t like that in Japan at the time the Kokinshu was written. The Kokinshu is a collection of poems, organized into books. Smart poems, written in a few lines, on numerous topics. But, we’re on the topic of love. The Kokinshu contains a few sections on just love poems, written back and forth to lovers. The love poetry of the Kokinshu is like the come-hither flirtatious glance of today.
I think the love poems of the Kokinshu that best represent the ache of love (well, they all do in this section, but these are my favorite) are poems 761-767. I chose these collectively since all six show the desperate longing of a love that seems to remain unrequited.
First, poem 761:
One hundred times or
more I hear the fluttering
of the snipe’s wings
as I count the lonely hours
till dawn when you have not come

I think my heart just broke reading this. How sad! We don’t know the author’s gender, or even the narrators, which creates a poem that everyone can easily identify with. While this approach is more appropriate for the greeting cards of today, the language and the symbolism brings it away from that and give it a greater meaning. One hundred times the speaker hears the fluttering of the snipe’s wings. A snipe is this:

(http://mtkilimonjaro.blogspot.com/2007_08_01_archive.html)
Aw! Look at how cute. But to hear its wings beat for one hundred times? Interesting in the choice of birds the speaker uses; a snipe, according to Wikipedia, is very difficult to catch. This could perhaps suggest that the speaker finds it very difficult to catch the eyes, or maybe the heart, of their wanted. In the lonely hours of dawn, suggestive of an absent lover, could mean that the lover has left them, or has grown bored with them. The mention of dawn though could not only mean the lover (the person the speaker is referring too) has lost interest, but the speaker as well.

Time is very symbolic in these Japanese poems. Similar to the mention of the seasons, time is a great way to measure the passion displayed by the speaker. Showing the time moving towards dawn is symbolic of a closing relationship, I feel, while showing the time progressing from dusk shows a relationship that is beginning to take off and is full of passion. Around midnight is the climax of the relationship. What solidifies a cooling of passion in this relationship of the speaker is the fact that the speaker is alone in the poem. Waiting as their lover has stood them up. This leads to my analysis of the next two pieces of poetry: what keeps the lover away?

Poem 762:
cutting us apart
now like the trailing ivy –
can he mean to part
sending me not even a
whisper on the blowing wind

and, Poem 763:
upon me falls a chill
untimely rain drenching my
flowing sleeves is it
that autumn has come early
to his heart freezing our love
Written by anonymous, I’m still going to look at these as a set, as they embody a reason for the absence of the lover. I’ll be referring to the poems simply by their numbers, 762 and 763 respectfully. 762 shows an almost physical reaction for the reason of the lover’s absences, not necessarily relating to poem 761. The words cutting and trailing ivy seem to suggest that the relationship did last for a while. The latter choice of words give the image of a lazy relationship (perhaps the other party wasn’t very serious) and the former word choice shows an abrupt end to it. The man the speaker is referring to shows an almost one sided break in the relationship. He won’t even talk to her, as referenced by not even a whisper on the blowing wind. Apparently he doesn’t even have to do much to talk to her, because the wind is blowing, a most redundant phrase.

763 shows another man who has left his lover. The speaker feels a chill of rain on their sleeves. A very untimely rain. This most likely means he’s broken the speaker’s heart sooner than they expected, since it’s referred to as untimely. Untimely changes a part of the meaning of the line, since if it was just rain, then the speaker was prepared for apparent heartbreak, but untimely suggests that is came quicker than expected. We see seasons in this poem instead of hours, and, as I’ve mentioned before in a previous entry’s analysis, Autumn is the phase where everything begins to die. It’s not winter, so the passion the woman and the man feel is not quite dead, but it’s getting there – autumn has come eary/to his heart. Concluding the poem with freezing our love suggests that the speaker may be starting to feel the same way towards the man because it uses the word our. If the word his had been used, that would have suggested she still was interested.

Poem 764 continues this idea, but instead of both parties having been interested at one point, this piece shows the love is unreciprocated:
though the mountain spring
is shallow-hearted I am
not why does my love
never visit only his
refection appears to me
Mountain springs are usually crystal clear, so we get an image of a pure love and the second and third lines indicate a great amount of love is present. Although, interesting is the use of the phrase shallow-hearted. She’s not, but why mention shallowness to begin with? Maybe this is a stretch, but perhaps her lover is ashamed to visit because he’s ugly/deformed – ill mannered even! The fact that his reflection shows in a mountain spring….a spring normally ripples over rocks, and when you cast a reflection on it, usually the reflection remains steady, although the water is not. It’s all very romantic!

Or perhaps, it is a love that cannot be grasped. How difficult it is to catch running water – it just trickles out of your hands until only drops remain in your palms. We’ll never know for sure why the lover doesn’t appear to the speaker. However, poem 765 shows us another nongendered perspective where we can hypothesize that the speaker is being held away from their lover because of complications derived from both parties.

Poem 765:
I wish I had sown
grasses of forgetfulness
when we first met if
only I had known how hard
it would be to see each other

This poem, I feel, is a bit more sexual than the others. I say this because of the first two lines. The fact that he wishes he had sown grasses, not seed, I think means that the two slept together. Grass indicates something that takes time to grow. If speaker had said sown/seeds, that would be a heavy indication that the speaker wanted to have a passionate encounter with the other person. By saying grasses, we get a more long term feeling, since grasses indicates time taken to grow, and that they have time to grow. By adding forgetfulness shows a regret that they hadn’t tried to strengthen their relationship, added to the fact that they cannot see each other because of complications. I suggest that both parties are experiencing complications, not just the speaker (because if it were just the speaker, than it may suggest that the speaker doesn’t really want to see the other), because of the last line. Instead of using the word you, the speaker uses the word other, supporting my claim that it is because of both parties.

While love today is cheapened by ambiguous greeting cards, love in the era of when the Kokinshu was written wasn’t. There is more emotion in these poems, showing a hurt, desire, and pleasure that comes from one, or both parties. While the majority of the poems I selected were majorly of the hurt and desire persuasion, just the fact that these speakers were able to write about love shows the possibility that they felt the pleasure of it too. Forgive me if I sound cliché, but that’s tragically romantic!


*And wow, none of this was formatted correctly. As soon as I figure out how to, I will.