山川に

風のかけたる

しがらみは

流れもあへぬ

紅葉なりけり

はるみちのつらき

やまがわに

かぜのかけたる

しがらみは

ながれもあえぬ

もみぢなりけり

Harumichi no Tsuraki

In the mountain stream

The wind has blown together

A weir of foliage,

But the current cannot even

Drag along all autumn leaves.

Harumichi no Tsuraki (died in 920) was a graduate of the imperial university. Only five poems of him are in existence.

作者略伝と語釈

In the Kokinshu it is noted that this poem was ‘composed on crossing over Mount Shiga’, and there could be a pun in shigarami (now also saku), weir, fence or paling, which sounds similar to shigayama, a mountain situated near Lake Biwa.

On the woodcut we see the maple leaves in a turbulent mountain river, a woman being held up by a child in its turn being held up by a slow pet turtle, a man trying to gather the leaves from the river, and sawyers hard at work. Hokusai seems to point to the resistance found in many things to get them to comply with our wishes, which might be the correct interpretation of the poem or the intention of the poet.

Hokusai