雪とけて 村一ぱいの 子どもかな yuki tokete mura ippai no kodomo kana issa 一茶 The snow melts, and the village is full of children

雪とけて村一ぱいの子どもかな (yuki tokete mura ippai no kodomo kana): the snow melts, and the village is full of children.

The dictionaries define snow melt, 雪解け, as the melting of snow that has fallen and lain, a seasonal word of spring. After a place, いっぱい means the place is entirely filled, so the whole village is full of children.

Issa's later fair copy keeps the town, 町. The form known today is the village, 村, as prints of 1926 set it and a primary-school reader prints it now. That reader's form is the one this page gives, character for character, closing on かな, the same exclamation the diary writes 哉.

The 1976 editors of Issa's complete works call the verse printed under 柯尺's name Issa's own. They describe 柯尺 as a haikai poet of the town of Zenkōji. No source read for the history says why the verse went out under the name 柯尺.

Kawashima Tsuyu, in his commentary read in its 1936 edition, hears noise in the words the whole village. He allows that the village may be in Issa's home region, and says no more than that.

R. H. Blyth put the verse into English in 1942: The snow having melted, / The village / Is full of children. Harold G. Henderson's version of 1958 makes the village overflowing, with the remark This certainly starts one on a picture of disaster. Later translators wrote flooded and floodwaters; no Japanese source read for the history reads a flood.

Kobayashi Issa, in his diary, the 七番日記, in the first month of 文化11 (1814), as 雪とけて村一ぱいの子ども哉; in its third month the diary has 町, town, for 村, and Issa printed the 町 form that year in his anthology 『三韓人』 under the name of the poet 柯尺.

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