The words as printed in the last couplet mean, ‘I am very sorry that it has not a single seed’; but, if mino is taken as one word, it would mean, ‘I am very sorry that (the yamabuki, i.e. herself, the mountain flower) has not any rain-coat’. And this was the maiden’s delicate apology. The Prince, we are told, was astonished to find such culture and learning in a peasant girl!
Perhaps what strikes one most in connexion with the Hyaku-nin-isshiu is the date when the verses were written; most of them were produced before the time of the Norman Conquest, and one cannot but be struck with the advanced state of art and culture in Japan at a time when England was still in a very elementary stage of civilization.
The Collection, as will be seen, consists almost entirely of love-poems and what I may call picture-poems, intended to bring before the mind’s eye some well-known scene in nature; and it is marvellous what perfect little thumbnail sketches are compressed within thirty-one syllables, however crude and faulty the translation may be; for instance, verses Nos. 79, 87, and 98. But the predominating feature, the undercurrent that runs through them all, is a touch of pathos, which is characteristic of the Japanese. It shows out
