Round Three

Left[i]

君が代は神にぞいのる住之江の松の千年をゆづれとおもへば

kimi ga yo wa kami ni zo inoru suminoe no matsu no chitose o yuzure to omoeba

My Lord’s reign: To the gods I pray, that Suminoe’s Pines their thousand years Pass on—that is my hope…

Retired from the World
61a

きみがへむやちよのかずはあめにますとよをかひめの神やしるらん

kimi ga hemu yachiyo no kazu wa ame ni masu toyo’okahime no kami ya shiruran

That my Lord will endure The number of eight thousand ages— Residing in the heavens, The Goddess of the Eternal Hills, The deity, knows well, no doubt!

Retired from the World
61b

Right (Win)

君がよはつきじとぞおもふ春の日の御笠の山にささむかぎりは

kimi ga yo wa tsukiji to zo omou haru no hi no mikasa no yama ni sasamu kagiri wa

My Lord’s reign Will never fade, I feel! While in spring the sun Upon Mikasa Mountain Shines down…

Senior Assistant Minister Past Lecturer
62

Both Left and Right have neither strengths nor weakness in their diction and sense, but I feel that ‘While in spring the sun / Upon Mikasa Mountain / Shines down’ is a bit more dependable at present than ‘Suminoe’s / Pines their thousand years’.

It is certainly not the case that there are no dubious elements about the Left’s poem. As ‘eight thousand ages’ is a definite number, what is it that the Goddess of the Eternal Hills is expected to know? If this is something in the deity’s hands, then it should be, ‘does not even know the number’. I’m sure the Goddess herself would ask what she’s expected to know. The Right seems stronger.

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[i] There are different poems by Eien this round in different versions of the text of the contest. As can be inferred from the judgements, Mototoshi saw the first poem and Toshiyori the second. This strongly suggests that Mototoshi’s judgements were circulated before the text of the contest was submitted to Toshiyori, and Eien revised his poem this round as a result (Kubota et al. 2018, 308).