Every New Year, millions of Japanese households play かるた（karuta）with the 百人一首（ひゃくにんいっしゅ, Hyakunin Isshu）, a thirteenth-century anthology of one hundred waka by one hundred poets. Because the game keeps these poems memorized and recited aloud, classical Japanese（文語, ぶんご）survives here not as a museum piece but as living sound. And because a waka packs classical grammar into thirty-one morae, two of these poems will teach you more about 文語 than a page of rules. The essential mindset: classical Japanese is not "old modern Japanese." It is a related dialect with different verb endings, different auxiliaries, and different particles. Read it as you would read Chaucer — decoding, not translating word-for-word — and it becomes navigable.
The 5-7-5-7-7 meter
A waka（also called 短歌, たんか）is five lines of 5-7-5-7-7 morae, thirty-one beats total. The first three lines（上（かみ）の句）often set an image; the last two（下（しも）の句）turn or complete it. Keep the beat-count in mind as you read — the meter is the container the grammar is poured into.
Poem 2 — 春過ぎて夏来にけらし: the auxiliary cluster
春過ぎて夏来にけらし白妙の衣ほすてふ天の香具山
haru sugite natsu ki ni kerashi shirotae no koromo hosu chō ama no kaguyama
Spring has passed, and it seems summer has come — for they are drying the white robes, they say, on heavenly Mt. Kagu. (Empress Jitō, Hyakunin Isshu no. 2)
Read line by line. The opening is gentle:
春過ぎて夏来にけらし
haru sugite natsu ki ni kerashi
Spring has passed, and it seems summer has come.
The payload is 来にけらし, a stack of three classical elements that a beginner cannot parse with modern rules — and that is exactly the point. Unfold it:
| Piece | What it is | Force |
|---|---|---|
| 来（き） | 連用形 of the カ変 verb 来（く）"to come" | "come" |
| に | 連用形 of the perfective auxiliary ぬ | completion: "has come" |
| けらし | contraction of けるらし = けり（連体形 ける）＋ らし（conjecture） | "it seems / apparently" |
So 来にけらし = "it seems summer has come" — a completed arrival, softened by inference. The poet does not see summer arrive; she infers it from a visible sign (the white robes drying on the mountain). Note that に here is not the location/target particle you know from modern Japanese — it is the 連用形 of the perfective ぬ. And けらし packs a past auxiliary（けり, covered on the き / けり page）together with the conjectural らし ("apparently"). Modern Japanese would say 夏が来たらしい.
白妙の — a pillow-word
白妙の衣ほすてふ
shirotae no koromo hosu chō
they are drying the white robes, they say
白妙（しろたへ）の is a 枕詞（まくらことば, pillow-word）: a fixed, conventional epithet that decorates a specific following word without adding literal information. 白妙の (white mulberry-bark cloth) conventionally leads into 衣 (robe), 袖 (sleeve), 雪, 雲, or 波. It is doing the job "milk-white" does before "dawn" in English poetry — a set poetic collocation, not a fresh description. When you spot a 枕詞, do not over-translate it; register it as poetic colour attached to the next word.
てふ is the classical contraction of という（"which they say / that they —"）, and it is read ちょう (chō) even though it is spelled てふ — a historical-kana spelling frozen into the poem. 衣ほすてふ = 衣を干すという = "which, they say, they dry." The whole line is hearsay: the poet reports the summer custom of airing white robes on the sacred mountain.
天の香具山 — ending on a name
天の香具山
ama no kaguyama
heavenly Mt. Kagu
The poem closes on the proper noun 天（あま）の香具山（かぐやま）, one of the three sacred hills of the old Yamato capital, with の as a genitive/appositive ("the heavenly Mt. Kagu"). Ending on a bare noun（体言止め, たいげんどめ）leaves the image standing, unresolved, the way the frog-haiku ends on 音. The modern paraphrase: 春が過ぎて夏が来たらしい。真っ白な衣を干すという天の香具山よ。
Poem 1 — 秋の田の: つつ and the ミ語法
秋の田のかりほの庵の苫をあらみわが衣手は露にぬれつつ
aki no ta no kariho no io no toma o arami waga koromode wa tsuyu ni nure tsutsu
By the autumn fields, the thatch of the little harvest hut is so coarse that my sleeves are wet with dew, on and on. (Emperor Tenji, Hyakunin Isshu no. 1)
The poem that opens the anthology hides two classical structures worth the price of admission.
苫をあらみ — "because it is coarse"
苫をあらみ
toma o arami
because the thatch is coarse
This is the ミ語法, one of classical Japanese's most alien-looking constructions. The frame is 「（体言）を（形容詞語幹）＋み」, and it means "because (the noun) is (adjective)." Here 苫 (the woven-reed thatch) + を + あら (the stem of the adjective 荒（あら）し, "coarse/sparse") + み = "because the thatch is coarse." The を is not an object marker; it pairs with the み to build a causal clause. Modern Japanese has no descendant of this exact frame — you would say 苫が粗いので. When you meet 「〜を…み」in a classical text, read it as "because ~ is …," and do not hunt for a verb the を might be the object of.
There is a metrical surprise here too, and it is worth naming honestly:
わが衣手は露にぬれつつ — つつ, the ongoing thread
わが衣手は露にぬれつつ
waga koromode wa tsuyu ni nure tsutsu
my sleeves are wet with dew, on and on
わが is classical "my"（わ "I" ＋ が, here possessive）— the が you know as a subject marker was also the old genitive. 衣手（ころもで） is poetic diction for "sleeve" (literally "the hand-part of the robe"); wet sleeves are the waka shorthand for tears or cold hardship.
The closing auxiliary is つつ, attached to the 連用形 ぬれ (from 濡（ぬ）る, "to get wet"). つつ marks ongoing or repeated action — "continually, again and again, all the while." At a poem's end（つつ止め, "closing on つつ"）it also leaves the action hanging open, unfinished, the dew still falling. This is the one classical form on the page that is not dead: formal and literary modern Japanese still uses つつ for "while" — 働きつつ学ぶ ("study while working") — and 〜つつある for a process underway. The waka's つつ is the ancestor of that living form.
The modern paraphrase: 秋の田のそばの粗末な小屋の、屋根の苫の編み目が粗いので、私の袖は露に濡れ続けている。
The distinguishing insight: read it as a dialect, not a puzzle
The trap that ruins classical reading is treating 文語 as modern Japanese in disguise — forcing に to mean "at," reading 苫を as a plain object, expecting あらみ to be a verb. It is none of these. Classical Japanese is structurally different: the perfective ぬ, the conjectural らし, the ミ語法, the pillow-words, and the 連体形 endings that differ from modern ones are a coherent other system, not corrupted modern grammar. Once you accept that — the way you accept that "whom" and "thou shalt" follow their own older rules — the poems stop being ciphers. You are not decoding a modern sentence that has been scrambled; you are reading a related dialect that kept the grammar modern Japanese wore away.
Common mistakes
❌ 夏来にけらし ＝『夏に来た』と読む。
natsu ki ni kerashi = natsu ni kita to yomu
Wrong に — reading に as the location/target particle 'to summer.' Here に is the 連用形 of the perfective ぬ: 'has come.'
✅ 夏来にけらし ＝『夏が来たらしい』。
natsu ki ni kerashi = natsu ga kita rashii
It seems summer has come. (来＝continuative, に＝perfective ぬ, けらし＝past + conjecture)
The に in 〜にけり / 〜にけらし is the perfective ぬ, not the particle に. Misreading it as "to/at" is the single most common classical error.
❌ 苫をあらみ ＝『苫を洗う』のような動詞句と読む。
toma o arami = toma o arau no yō na dōshiku to yomu
Wrong — treating を as an object marker and hunting for a verb. あらみ is not a verb; を…み is a causal frame.
✅ 苫をあらみ ＝『苫が粗いので』。
toma o arami = toma ga arai node
because the thatch is coarse (the ミ語法: を + adjective-stem + み = 'because ~ is …')
「〜を…み」is a fixed causal construction. The を belongs with the み, not to a missing verb.
❌ 白妙の衣 の『白妙の』を『白い布の』と訳して情報として扱う。
shirotae no koromo no 'shirotae no' o 'shiroi nuno no' to yakushite jōhō to shite atsukau
Over-translating a 枕詞 — 白妙の is a conventional pillow-word decorating 衣, not a literal 'made of white cloth.'
✅ 白妙の衣（枕詞）
shirotae no koromo
the white robes (白妙の is a fixed poetic epithet for 衣/袖, adding colour, not literal detail)
❌ 露にぬれつつ の つつ を『〜しながら』とだけ訳し、余韻を捨てる。
tsuyu ni nure tsutsu no tsutsu o 'shinagara' to dake yakushi, yoin o suteru
Undertranslating つつ — reading it only as 'while' and missing the 'on and on, still going' openness of つつ止め.
✅ 露にぬれつつ
tsuyu ni nure tsutsu
my sleeves growing wet with dew, on and on (つつ = continual/ongoing; ending on つつ leaves it unfinished)
Key takeaways
- A waka is 5-7-5-7-7 morae; a hypermetric line（字余り, e.g. 六-mora 苫をあらみ）is licensed when it holds a stray vowel after a particle.
- 来にけらし = 来（continuative）＋ に（perfective ぬ）＋ けらし（けり＋らし, "seems to have —"） — the に is the perfective, never the particle "to/at."
- 白妙の is a 枕詞 (pillow-word) for 衣/袖; てふ（read ちょう）= という, hearsay "they say."
- 苫をあらみ is the ミ語法: 「（体言）を（形容詞語幹）み」= "because ~ is …."
- つつ marks ongoing/repeated action and survives in formal modern Japanese（働きつつ / 〜つつある）— the one form here that is still alive.
- Read 文語 as a related dialect with its own coherent grammar, not as scrambled modern Japanese.
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