The Right team wonder whether ‘know a field well’ (hara ni naruru) isn’t a bit ‘modern’ for poetry. Furthermore, ‘sink springtime in confusion’ (haru madouran) ‘seems to be missing something’ (by this they probably mean that you would expect the expression to be haru ni madouran, with the grammatical structure more clearly expressed). The Left team respond that the first line of the Right’s poem ‘grates on the ear’ and wonder, ‘What one is to make of “pheasants’ lodgings” (kigisu no yado)?’, meaning that traditional poetic expression called for ‘warblers’ lodgings’ (uguisu no yado).
Shunzei rather harshly says that the Left’s poem is ‘poorly constructed and unacceptable in both spirit and diction,’ wondering whether there was ‘a single school which would not find fault with it on the grounds of both logic and poetic form’? It would be possible to say ‘flying pheasants’ springtime confusion’ (tatsu kigisu no haru madou), and this would ‘not require any criticism’, just as ‘crying, flying pheasants’ lodging’ does not. Furthermore, the Right’s final stanza, ‘Among the brushwood undergrowth’ (shiba no shitagusa) is ‘particularly pleasant’ and so the Right’s poem must be awarded the victory.
Shunzei states the first part of the Left’s poem is ‘elevated in tone’, but that the final line is problematic: a reference to ‘morning’ might have been better, or just to the ‘valleys’ breeze’, but this would not have fitted the syllable count. If the intention had been to add a sense of ‘darkness’ to the poem, an expression such as ‘the valleys, shadowed by the crags’ would have been better. As for the Right’s poem, the image of the ‘twig-roofed hut’ is lonely, but the overlaying of the ‘cold’ with ‘blanket’ (in the original poem ‘samushiro’ is a play-on-words with both senses) is pedestrian, and so the Left’s poem, despite its faults, is adjudged the winner.