lit. 'pillow words' (枕詞) are figures of speech used in Japanese poetry in association with certain words. The set phrase can be thought of as a "pillow" for the noun or verb it describes, although the actual etymology is not fully known. It can also describe associations and allusions to older poems (see ). Many have lost their original meaning but are still used. They are not to be confused with ("poem pillow"), which are a category of poetic words used to add greater mystery and depth to poems. are present in the, one of Japan's earliest chronicles.

History and usage

are most familiar to modern readers in the, and when they are included in later poetry, it is to make allusions to poems in the. The exact origin of remains contested to this day, though both the and the, two of Japan's earliest chronicles, use it as a literary technique. In terms of usage, are often used at the beginning of a poem. The is a similar figure of speech used in poetry, used to introduce a poem. In fact, the 17th-century Buddhist priest and scholar Keichū wrote that "if one says, one speaks of long " in his. Japanese scholar Shinobu Orikuchi also echoes this statement, claiming that are that have been compressed. While some still have meanings that add to the meaning of the following word, many others have lost their meanings. As became standardized and used as a way to follow Japanese poetic traditions, many were used only as decorative phrases in poems and not for their meanings. Many translators of poems face difficulty when translating, because although they make up the first line, many have no substantial meaning, and it is impossible to discard the whole first line of a. It is said that Sei Shōnagon often used this technique in The Pillow Book, and some earlier scholars thought that they were named after the book, but most agree now that the practice was fairly common at the time she wrote the Pillow Book.

Examples

There are many instances of found in the. The very first poem demonstrates how this was used: In this poem, sora mitsu (literally "sky-seen" or "sky-spreading") modifies the place name Yamato. Some historical have developed into the usual words for their meaning in modern Japanese, replacing the terms they originally alluded to. For example, bird of the garden (庭つ鳥) was in classical Japanese a for chicken (鶏). In modern Japanese, has displaced the latter word outright and become the everyday word for "chicken" (dropping the case marker along the way). Some more are listed below:

Additional sources