16 January 2020

Poetry Thursday - Japanese poems about fish

Katsuo Fish with Saxifrage by Hiroshige from the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Bonito (katsuo) and saxifrage (yukinoshita [雪の下]) by Hiroshige (via)



Fresh bonito tastes best
when you let it melt in your mouth
under the snow of Kamakura
Toshihiro Machikado

(The phrase “under the snow,” is the literal translation of the name of the plant below the fish, saxifrage.)


I found the translation of the poem that is written - or rather, carved and printed -on Hiroshige's print while researching Hiroshige's Shoal of Fishes, published in the1830s in response to a request from the Kyokashi poetry guild for prints to accompany ten poems. So really the poem is more important than the fish - or at least the poem preceded the fish.

The article from which this comes also gives the translation to another poem, by Haruzono Shizue, about trout - or rather, it gives three translations, some more "poetic" than the others.

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