The Autumn Moon

木の間よりもりくる月の影見れば心づくしの秋は来にけり よみ人しらず

Autumn arrives on the wind….. According to classical Japanese poetry, from the beginning of autumn and the autumn wind, the season proceeds to linger on the night sky.

Namely on the Star Festival and the Autumn Moon.

One of my favorite poems from the 10th century imperial anthology, the Kokin Wakashū (古今和歌集, "Collection of Japanese Poems of Ancient and Modern Times"), commonly abbreviated as Kokinshū (古今集) is this beauty:

木の間よりもりくる月の影見れば心づくしの秋は来にけり　よみ人しらず

Gazing at the moonlight

            spilling down through the trees

I am consumed with thoughts

            of Autumn’s arrival

—Anonymous

Helen Craig McCullough translated 月の影見れば as “to see moonlight fall filtering through the branches…” which is very beautiful and captures the feeling of dappled moonlight.

She then translates 心づくしの秋は来にけり as: “to awaken to the coming of autumn, the saddest season of all.”

The saddest season of all is not in the Japanese words, but is a convention borrowed from Chinese poetry, where decay, sadness, fading are all associated with autumn deepening toward winter.

In grad school, when I first encountered the poem, I see in my notes that I translated it like this

Gazing at the moonlight

            spilling down through the trees

I am consumed

            with the sadness of

Coming Autumn

心づくし can mean to think of this and that, to dwell on something or be consumed with thoughts. A modern Japanese translation has it like this: あれこれ思い悩む to be worried with thoughts of this and that.

So translators will get the sadness of the season one way or another.

Here are some other enchanting phrases for the early autumn moon:

• 秋風月　autumn wind moon that evokes the moon shining down on autumn grasses blowing in the wind

• 雁来月 Returning geese moon is the moon lighting the geese returning from the north

• 萩月 Bush clover moon (bush clover is one of the seven grasses of autumn)

And my favorite: 桂月 keigetsu is a beautiful trope from China, which suggested that the moon looks orange at this time of year because there is a lunar cinnabar tree that changes color

久方の月の桂も秋はなほもみじすればやてりまさるらむ　　ただみね

Might it be because

the cinnabar tree on the moon

changes colors in autumn

that causes the autumn moon to shine so brightly —Tadamine