▶If I am to pick one, let me pick by guesswork — the white chrysanthemum, now indistinguishable under the first frost.
Ōshikōchi no Mitsune (dates unknown) was a poet of the early Heian period, active around the turn of the tenth century. His court rank stayed low all his life — minor posts in Kai and Awaji — yet his skill was ranked beside Ki no Tsurayuki's, and he was chosen as one of the four compilers of the Kokin Wakashū. He is one of the Thirty-Six Poetic Immortals. This poem is Kokin Wakashū, Autumn II, 277, headed 'Composed on white chrysanthemums'. Early on a late-autumn morning the first frost covers the whole garden, and he cannot tell where the white chrysanthemums are. In the Meiji era Masaoka Shiki singled the poem out in his Letters to the Tanka Poets: a little frost could never hide a white chrysanthemum; the conceit is a lie. But to a Heian poet it was no lie; it was mitate, the technique of seeing one thing as another. Rather than copy what is there, the poet exaggerates on purpose, and so carries the whiteness and cold of that morning, and the instant of held breath. Shiki the realist and Mitsune of the conceit — this one poem stands at the parting of the ways in what Japanese poetry has called beautiful over a thousand years.
He goes out into the garden in the morning and everything is white. Is it frost, or chrysanthemum? He reaches out, and stops. 'Orabaya oran' — if I am to pick one, shall I pick one? The poem has no 'beautiful', no 'cold', no 'glad'. There is only a hand half reached out, and a few seconds of hesitation. That he cannot tell them apart is of course an exaggeration. But thanks to that exaggeration, the whiteness of a first-frost morning, before the eyes adjust, opens out in front of us a thousand years later.
What drew us most to this poem is that it conveys the whiteness of a morning with nothing but a hand half reached out, without a single word of feeling. So the lyrics, too, are written with scenes and gestures only. A morning woken before the alarm, a fogged window, breath that walks on ahead of you. The garden, the roofs, even the bicycle saddle have lost every colour they had last night — and the word 'white' is held back until the chorus. The chorus sings the poem as it is and then translates it — which is frost, and which is flower; a white morning where I cannot tell — with 'shall I pick one?' as the repeated hook. In the second verse the guess is wrong: what the fingertip touches is frost on a leaf, and it turns to water at once; and still the hand reaches out once more. In the bridge we tell, in plain words, that this poem was later laughed at as an exaggeration — and that, standing in the same morning, my own eyes cannot tell them apart either. A morning when you reach out on a guess, with the right answer still out of sight: we think that is a morning that high-school students who learn this poem in class also know. We do not preach it; the only will in the song is the poem's own 'shall I pick one?'. The music is bouncy acoustic indie-pop with celesta and glockenspiel like frost crystals and whistling like white breath.
心あてに（古今集/凡河内躬恒・百人一首29番）Garu JP
目覚ましより 先に起きた朝
窓のガラスが くもっている
玄関を出て 吐いた息が
ぼくより先に 歩いていく
庭も 屋根も 自転車のサドルも
ゆうべまでの色が ひとつも無い
心あてに 折らばや折らむ 初霜の
置きまどはせる 白菊の花
どれが霜で どれが花か
見分けのつかない 白い朝だ
あてずっぽうで 手を伸ばす
折ってみようか 折ってみようか
指の先が ふれたのは
花じゃなくて 葉の上の霜
指の先で すぐ水になる
外れた手を もう一度
日が昇れば 霜は消えてしまう
屋根の端が もう 光りはじめた
心あてに 折らばや折らむ 初霜の
置きまどはせる 白菊の花
どれが霜で どれが花か
見分けのつかない 白い朝だ
あてずっぽうで 手を伸ばす
折ってみようか 折ってみようか
むかし 初霜の朝を 歌にした人がいる
大げさだと ずっとあとで 笑われた
同じ朝に 立ってみれば
ぼくの目にも 見分けがつかない
心あてに 折らばや折らむ 初霜の
置きまどはせる 白菊の花
どれが霜で どれが花か
決めないままの 白い朝だ
日が昇るまえに 手を伸ばす
折ってみようか 折ってみようか
白菊の花……
Kokoro-ate ni (Kokin-shu / Oshikochi no Mitsune, Hyakunin Isshu No. 29) Garu JP
A morning I woke before the alarm
The window glass is fogged
I step out the door, and the breath I let out
walks on ahead of me
The garden, the roofs, even the bicycle saddle —
not one of last night's colors is left
If I must guess, then let me guess and pick one — in the first frost
that hides them from the eye, the white chrysanthemums
Which is frost, and which is flower?
A white morning where I cannot tell
On a guess, I reach out my hand
Shall I pick one? Shall I pick one?
What my fingertip touched
was not a flower but frost on a leaf
On my fingertip it turns to water at once
My hand guessed wrong — once more
When the sun rises, the frost will be gone
The edge of the roof has already begun to shine
If I must guess, then let me guess and pick one — in the first frost
that hides them from the eye, the white chrysanthemums
Which is frost, and which is flower?
A white morning where I cannot tell
On a guess, I reach out my hand
Shall I pick one? Shall I pick one?
Long ago, someone made a poem of a first-frost morning
and was laughed at, long afterwards, for exaggerating
But standing in the same morning
my eyes cannot tell them apart either
If I must guess, then let me guess and pick one — in the first frost
that hides them from the eye, the white chrysanthemums
Which is frost, and which is flower?
A white morning I leave undecided
Before the sun rises, I reach out my hand
Shall I pick one? Shall I pick one?
White chrysanthemums...