SOURCE: Haga, Norio. “The Poetic Style of Yamanoue no Okura: With Reference to His Elegy on the Death of Furuhi.” Acta Asiatica: Bulletin of the Institute of Eastern Culture, no. 77 (July 1999): 50-73.

In the following essay, Haga attributes three Man'yōshū elegies to a lost child to Yamanoue no Okura, and analyzes these verses in conjunction with others by Okura on similar themes.

I

“three Poems of Longing for the Boy Called Furuhi” (gi; “three Poems of Longing for the Boy Called Furuhi” (one Chōka and two Tanka) =~ Sone Chōka and two Tanka)

What worth to me the seven treasures, So prized and desired by all the world? Furuhi, born of us two, Our love, our dear white pearl, At dawn, bright with the morning star, Would never leave our bedside And, standing or sitting, frolicked with us; When dusk came with the evening star, “Let's...