The Kyokusui no utage (or kokusui no en) 曲水の宴, a court occasion when poets would seat themselves beside a stream, and sake cups would be floated down to them. When the cup reached each poet, he would take it from the water, drink the sake, and recite a poem he had composed for the occasion. The earliest record of this being carried out in Japan is in 485, to celebrate the accession of Emperor Kenzō 顕宗天皇, although there then appears to have been a gap of just over two hundred years until it became a regular part of the Court’s activities in the Nara period, usually taking place on the Third day of the Third Month.
Category Archives: Background
Someone now dead
The mountain ‘tween brief nights
The original poem, refers to an actual place name saya no nakayama (小夜の中山 ), which was an actual place on the road between the capital and the eastern provinces, where the trail passed along a ridge with deep valleys on either side, the ‘brief nights’.
The implication in the poem is that the poet has been left to travel on alone, abandoned by his travelling companion, so he alone sees the moon here. The place name is, of course, used as it contains the sense of ‘night’ and hence reinforces the reference to the moon.
Cursed crashing waves
Muro no Yashima
Muro no Yashima (室の八島) was a reference to a Ōmiwa (大神) shrine, which can still be found today in Sōjamachi (惣社町) in Tochigi City to the north of Tokyo. One of the key features of the shrine is a small lake, about eight tenths of an acre in area (2600 square metres) containing eight islets (yashima), each of which has a shrine to a different Shinto deity upon it. Poetically, it was believed that water used to rise from the lake like smoke, and hence it became used as a standard image for smoke which, in turn was a metaphor for the secret fires of love. Unfortunately, the reality of the place does not match up to the poetic image, and a visitor to the shrine will search in vain for water rising from the lake, just as the famous haiku poet Bashō did, two hundred years ago.
The name Muro no Yashima literally means “Eight Island Kilns” and occurs in Shinto mythology, where it is said to have been the place where the goddess Konohananosakuyabime (木花咲耶姫命), as she had become pregnant in one night, gave birth to three deities surrounded by fire in order to protect her remaining virtue. It seems likely that word of the place name in distant Shimotsusa reached the capital, and it was then associated with the myth, and hence fire, even though that was not its actual nature.
Fukiage Beach
Fukiage Beach (fukiage no hama 吹上の濱) was a well-known poetic location on the coast of Ki Province, to the south of the capital. In his personal collection, Fujiwara no Kintō (966-1041) remarks of it, “We reached Fukiage Beach. When the sands were blown up by the wind, it was as if hazy mist were streaming across it. Certainly a place with a most appropriate name!” As a result the place became poetically associated with sand being blown up by the wind, and the beauty, or concealing features of it.
Miyagi Fields
The sacred bounds of Ikuta
A reference to the wood surrounding the shrine at Ikuta. Located in what is now Kobe, this was a shrine dedicated to Wakahirume no Kami (稚日女神), the deity of weaving and younger sister of Amaterasu Ōmikami who, according to myth, died when she struck herself on the genitals with a shuttle when starting in surprise at the skin of a piebald colt flung into the sacred weaving hall by Susa no O no Mikoto (素盞鳴尊). This handicap does not appear to have prevented her halting the boat of Empress Jingū in Kobe harbour when returning from a campaign in Korea and demanding the establishment of a shrine to her as the price of passage. The wood around the shrine was well-known and freqently referred to in poetry. More detail on the shrine (in Japanese) and pictures of it can be found here .
I cleanse myself
Teika is here referring to the nagoshi no harae (夏越の祓), a purification ritual carried out every year on the last day of the Sixth lunar month (towards the end of August) in order to avoid illness and ill fortune in the second half of the year. Despite what he says in the poem, it did not generally involve cleansing oneself with water: people would visit their local shrine and be purified by passing through a hoop of cogon grass.