Owari (The End)
So that’s it folks! Project Chihayafuru is officially over. It was a fun 101 days being able to post all 100 poems of the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu as well as the opening poem (from the Kokin Wakashu). The main reason why I started was because I had a lot free time with me and I thought that it was a good way for me to start understanding and learning the poems that are constantly featured in the anime/manga.
Being a non-Japanese speaker or writer, I sourced the translations from various websites (will post them below) and even made some minor changes for which I deem fit. I found out that even though it may be only one poem, the translations and interpretations may be many (the beauty of Literature). I of course took the translation that I thought fit the anime/manga most as well as part of my preference.
That said, there were many poems that I struggled interpreting even with translations (much is lost in translation after all) and thus it resulted to me not being to competently relate it back to the story. And for that, I realise that reading something from its original source always brings a deeper meaning (I plan to take Japanese lessons in the future).
What was stark to me during the course of the project was that the easiest genre of poetry to interpret and relate to was love. This is really not surprising considering there are 43 love poems in the anthology and Chihayafuru has a romantic back-story. A lot of the love poems though, were either about the suppression of feelings (hidden love), tragic (unable to reunite, forbidden) or unrequited. For the first and third category, many of the poems of course to me pointed to Taichi.
A lot of the poems also described scenery in seasons, or used seasons to convey their feelings. Autumn was most prominent, relating to loneliness. Chihayafuru (Poem 17) which in fact in itself can be interpreted as a love poem through an autumn setting backs this as well. Spring is usually related to something new, afresh and a beginning and thus generally less depressing. Summer seems to represents youth best and winter has its similarities with autumn although of course, generally more harsh (rejection). And if you haven’t realised, these themes have been recurring in the story.
That said, because a writer doesn’t usually dwell too much on scenery in a story, many of the poems which talked about scenery are more for us to enhance parts of the story rather than the core of the main plot.
So I did definitely gain a lot throughout this course of my personal project and I’m glad I did it. For those who have yet to see it and are interested, or may have missed some poems, can check out the project in my blog under the ‘Project Chihayafuru’ link. All 101 poems are there. You can even check out under the hashtag in the Tumblr search engine since I tagged all of my posts.
I want to honestly thank to those of you who followed through this project with me by reblogging and liking my posts. I really appreciate it.
Till another project then.
http://chihayafuru.wikia.com/wiki/Ogura_Hyakunin_Isshu
https://100poets.wordpress.com/about/index/
http://sacred-texts.com/shi/hvj/index.htm
http://onethousandsummers.blogspot.sg/p/chouyaku-hyakuninisshu.html (23 poems)
http://100poems-100poets.blogspot.sg (Poems 1 to 20 only)