Round Seven
Left (Tie)
あまつほしありともみえぬ秋のよの月はすずしき光なりけり
| ama tsu hoshi ari tomo mienu aki no yo no tsuki wa suzushiki hikari narikeri | Stars in the heavens Appear there to be none on An autumn night when The moon a cool Light sheds. |
Kojijū
61
Right
さ夜ふくる空にきえゆく浮雲の名残もみえぬ秋のよの月
| sayo fukuru sora ni kieyuku ukigumo no nagori mo mienu aki no yo no tsuki | As brief night wears on Vanishing from the skies are The drifting clouds, Leaving no keepsake for The moon this autumn night. |
Moromitsu
62
The Left, in addition to suffering from the Tree-Bank fault,[1] compounds this by adding a further line so all the first three lines begin with the same sound. This has been noted as a fault in earlier poetry matches. The Right, too, mentions ‘night’ twice and this is a significant fault, but I am unable to grasp the sense of the Left’s poem, so it’s difficult to make a judgement between them.
[1] Ganjubyō 岸樹病 (‘Tree-Bank fault’): this was one of the four poetic faults identified in the poetic treatise Waka sakushiki 倭歌作式 (‘Code of Creation of Japanese Poetry’), attributed to Kisen 喜撰 (fl. 810-824), hence the treatise’s alternative title of Kisenshiki 喜撰式 (‘Kisen’s Selected Codes’). This attribution is widely believed to be spurious, however, and that the work was probably written in the mid-Heian period. Ganjubyō refers to beginning the first and second ‘lines’ of a waka with the same syllable, in this case ‘a’.