春の海終日のたりのたり哉 haru no umi hinemosu notari notari kana Buson - The spring sea, all day rising and falling, rising and falling

Yosa Buson's verse puts the slow motion of a calm sea into its sound. The doubled word のたりのたり takes as long to say as a swell takes to pass, and the sea keeps at it all day. Readers have praised it as plain and calm. They have not agreed where to look: at waves on the shore, farther out, or across the whole face of the sea.

In the Japanese, 春の海 is the spring sea, the season word. 終日, hinemosu, is all day long. のたりのたり is a slow heave of the water, moving at ease, and 哉 closes the line. Some of the hands write words in kana: one gives 終日 as ひねもす, and another ends on かな for 哉.

The English follows Haruo Shirane's, from The Cambridge History of Japanese Literature of 2016.

The verse is Buson's, from the Hōreki years that ended in 1764, and it was first printed in 1763 in the appendix of Shōzan's anthology 俳諧古選.

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