In the spirit of 7th January; Today I learned that there's a debate over one of Hijikata-san's poems.
The poem in question is: 春の草 五色までは 覚えけり
Roughly translates to: The spring herbs, I can only remember 5 of them.
By spring herbs, it's thought to be about the 7 herbs.
So this poem usually seems to be something like "ah I could only write 5 of the 7 herbs! I'm gonna fail the test!"
but as pointed out by the person who wrote about the debate, why would he just go ahead and write something like that?
(Granted he's not a talented poet but still, this is pretty low level even for him mr. "a flower is a flower even if it doesn't blossom")
So there's a second opinion.
What if it's not 草 (くさ）but 鶯 （うぐいす）
Because the transliteration is made from his handwriting, I can't tell at all!
Script Japanese is too difficult for me. But here's the thing.
When you change the kanji, the poem becomes completely different:
春の鶯 五色までは 覚えけり
With my awful translation skills: The spring warbler remembers up to 5 colors.
So what does it mean?
- The singing of the warbler (鶯 ) sounds like. ほ〜ほけきょ (Ho〜hokekyo) (Like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCshWxv85bE )
- But apparently before they're able to sing that, they actually make different sounds. Like imagine they learn how to sing it the older they grow, so when they're younger they're not able to make that sound yet.
- It's said that this amount of different sounds is called 七色（なないろ） - So by 五色 (いついろ) , it refers to a warbler who can't yet fully sing "hohokekyo".
So it goes from : I can only remember 5 of the 7 herbs
to : This warbler will soon will be able to sing beautifully.
Like he's watching the warbler grow up.
Then again, maybe he just really can't remember 2 of the 7 herbs.