Kokinshu Commentary -- 4

Book One -- Spring

4. A poem by the Nijo Empress [Koshi] on the beginning of spring

Springtime has arrived
While fallen snow lingers on.
Ah, now at long last
The warbler’s frozen teardrops
Will surely be dissolving.

Comment: The fourth Tanka refers back to the opening Tanka; the structure, and even some of the lines, are identical. Here are the two of them so you can compare:

Tanka 1:

Springtime has arrived
While the old year lingers on.
What then of the year?
Are we to talk of “last year”?
Or are we to say “this year”?

Tanka 4:

Springtime has arrived
While fallen snow lingers on.
Ah, now at long last
The warbler’s frozen teardrops
Will surely be dissolving.

Tanka 4 announces the arrival of spring by referring to the dissolving of teardrops, which implies that the temperature of the air is warming, one of the first signs of approaching spring. Tanka 1 raises the question of the meaning of a season, whether it is designated by reference to a human made calendar or something else. Tanka 4 designates the arrival of spring by an indirect reference to the warming of the air, a natural appearance unrelated to the human made calendar.

In a sense I read Tanka 4 as a restarting of the spring series of Tanka found in Book 1. It is almost like Tanka 1 was a false start and the series really begins with Tanka 4. The feeling here for me is one of tentativeness. I am thinking of the feeling I have sometimes had when starting a lecture on some topic, and then deciding after a few minutes to take a different approach, and so I would start over; I might even say to the audience something like, “Let’s get at this from a different perspective.”

The link to the previous Tanka is strong; if one takes the last lines of Tanka 3 they lead smoothly to Tanka 4:

While snow still falls
In the hills of Yoshino,
The hills of fair Yoshino

Springtime has arrived
While fallen snow lingers on.

Tanka 4 is the first Tanka that uses personification; the warbler is said to have “tears” which became frozen in winter and are now, in the warmer air of incipient spring, beginning to melt. It is possible that this Tanka refers to some folk story that I am not aware of, which would add a dimension of meaning. In any case, personification is used frequently in the Kokinshu, emotional states are read into the natural world so that the difference between the human and natural world is reduced. The message here is that spring is an optimistic time, a time when tears dissolve as new life emerges.

Personification is an effective means of pointing out what I call “resonance” between the human world and the world of nature. In traditional Tanka poetry the emotional world of humans is understood to mimic the world of nature and the world of nature is thought of as having an emotional life. This is not something that is easy for modern human to understand because modern humans tend to look at nature mechanistically. In my own opinion one of the virtues of the Kokinshu is that it does not view nature mechanistically; rather it seems the world of nature and the world of human beings as seamless.