Taken from _The Penguin Book of Japanese Verse_. _Climbing to Kasuga Moor_ High on the peak of Mikasa Which overtops Kasuga Range, At every dawn The clouds billow: Never stopping The curlew calls. Like the clouds My heart will not settle, Like the birds I cry my one-sided love. All the day and all the night, Standing, sitting, I long for her –  The girl I never meet. _Envoy_ High on the peak of Mikasa The birds call. They cease and they call again: My love dies, then lives again.                         YAMABE AKAHITO # Explanation This poem by Yamabe Akahito (active early 8th century) is a _waka_—a short, traditional Japanese verse form—expressing longing, constancy, and the ache of unfulfilled love. Let us break it down. --- ### **Setting and Imagery** The poet begins with a vivid natural scene: - **Mikasa Peak** above the **Kasuga Range** sets a high, lofty vantage point—suggesting not only physical elevation but also emotional intensity. - **Clouds billowing at dawn** evoke constant, restless movement—mirroring the poet’s unsettled emotions. - **Curlew calls** are plaintive and repetitive, symbolising a persistent yearning that cannot be silenced. In Japanese poetry, such natural images are never mere background; they reflect the inner state of the speaker (_mono no aware_—the sensitivity to fleeting beauty and sadness). --- ### **Emotional Core** The heart of the poem equates the poet’s feelings with these natural phenomena: - **Like the clouds** → his heart cannot find rest. - **Like the birds** → he expresses a repeated, plaintive cry. This is not mutual romance; it is _katakoi_—one-sided love. The repetition of “standing, sitting” across day and night underscores the obsessive, unbroken nature of his longing. --- ### **Absence and Desire** The “girl I never meet” is almost ghost-like: she exists in his mind and yearning, but not in his life. This absence deepens the pathos, as the love cannot progress—it can only cycle endlessly, like the dawn clouds or bird calls. --- ### **Envoy (Hanka)** The envoy is a shorter, summative verse, customary in classical Japanese poetry: - Birds call, then fall silent, then call again—mirroring the poet’s feelings of hope and despair. - The alternation of sound and silence is like the death and revival of his love over time: passion fades, but something rekindles it again and again. --- ### **Themes** 1. **Nature as mirror of emotion** – weather, landscape, and wildlife externalise inner turmoil. 2. **Endless cycles** – both nature and human emotion repeat in an unbroken loop. 3. **Unattainable love** – yearning without resolution, heightened by absence. --- Yamabe Akahito was one of the most celebrated poets of Japan’s **Nara period** (8th century) and a leading figure in the _Manyōshū_, the oldest surviving anthology of Japanese poetry. Court poets of this era often blended **personal emotion with landscape description**, drawing on the Shinto sensibility that nature and the human spirit are deeply intertwined. Akahito was particularly skilled at **landscape waka**, in which the natural setting is not just scenery but an active participant in the poem’s meaning. His works often depict well-known sites—here, Mikasa Peak and the Kasuga Range—not only to anchor the verse in a recognisable place for the court audience, but to evoke layers of cultural and seasonal association. This intertwining of place, season, and emotion became a hallmark of Japanese poetic tradition for centuries.