Spring has passed and summer seems to have come — for there on heavenly Mount Kagu, they say, pure white robes are hung out to dry when summer arrives.
Empress Jitō was the daughter of Emperor Tenji, author of No. 1 (the Hyakunin Isshu opens with a father-to-daughter relay). She fought through the Jinshin War, saw her father, her husband and her son die one after another, took the throne herself, and built Fujiwara-kyō, Japan's first full-scale capital city, laid out on the continental model.
What this empress sang, gazing from her own capital toward the sacred Mount Kagu, was neither bitterness nor lament but simply a calm, everyday observation: "summer seems to have come; white robes are hung out to dry." White robes are drying as they always do, and the seasons are turning as they should; that is a quiet declaration that the world is at peace and the people's lives are sound. A dazzling, wholesome white, arrived at by someone who had lost everything. The brightness of this poem is anything but light.
We overlaid the empress's gaze, spotting the arrival of summer in the white robes on Mount Kagu, onto a perfect laundry day in the present. Under a sky with no calendar and no weather forecast, there was someone who caught the season by reading nothing but the wind; we translated that sensitivity into the texture of daily life: a white shirt flapping on the balcony, a folded-away winter told "see you again." It is a song celebrating the small discovery of a season inside an ordinary day.
春過ぎて（持統天皇・百人一首2番）／Garu JP
毛布の上の ねこをおろして
たたんだ冬を 押し入れの奥へ
ベランダに干した 白いシャツを
風がページを めくるように鳴らす
春過ぎて 夏来にけらし
白妙の 衣ほすてふ 天の香具山
洗いたての シャツの白さで
季節がひとつ めくれてく
ららら……
すれ違う人の 袖が短い
パン屋の店先 かき氷の旗
ひだまりをまるごと 独り占めして
おなかを見せて 眠るねこ
春過ぎて 夏来にけらし
白妙の 衣ほすてふ 天の香具山
街のあちこち 白が増えて
季節がひとつ めくれてく
ららら……
香具山に ゆれる白から
夏を見つけた 人がいた
カレンダーも 天気予報もない
空の下で 風だけ読んで
春過ぎて 夏来にけらし 白妙の
衣ほすてふ 天の香具山
春過ぎて 夏来にけらし
白妙の 衣ほすてふ 天の香具山
洗いたての シャツの白さで
季節がひとつ めくれてく
取り込んだシャツの 山へまっ先に
飛び込むねこを どかして笑う
お日さまの匂い 胸いっぱい
たたんだ冬に 「またね」を言って
季節がひとつ めくれてく
夏来にけらし——
ららら…… 夏来にけらし——
Lifting the cat off the blanket
Folding winter away, deep into the closet
A white shirt hung out on the balcony
The wind rustles it like turning pages
Spring has passed, and summer, it seems, has come
White robes airing on heavenly Mount Kagu
In the whiteness of fresh-washed shirts
The season turns another page
La la la...
Passers-by with shorter sleeves
A shaved-ice flag outside the bakery
Claiming a whole pool of sunshine
The cat sleeps belly-up
Spring has passed, and summer, it seems, has come
White robes airing on heavenly Mount Kagu
White is spreading through the town
The season turns another page
La la la...
From the white swaying on Mount Kagu
Someone once found the summer there
No calendar, no weather forecast
Under the sky, reading only the wind
Spring has passed, and summer, it seems, has come — white robes
Airing on heavenly Mount Kagu
Spring has passed, and summer, it seems, has come
White robes airing on heavenly Mount Kagu
In the whiteness of fresh-washed shirts
The season turns another page
Straight into the mountain of fresh-dried shirts
The cat dives in — I laugh and shoo her off
A chest full of the smell of sunshine
Saying "see you" to the winter I folded away
The season turns another page
Summer, it seems, has come —
La la la... summer, it seems, has come —