Year-end Presentations of Waka Poems

2005, The Sixteenth year of Heisei

Year-end Presentation of five Waka Poems by His Majesty the Emperor

Celebration of the New Year
When dawn was breaking
The Kashiko-dokoro' s
Garden surface showed
In the midst of piling snows
The watchfires burning red.
Visit to Saipan Two poems.

At Saipan
An old man who had fought there,
Just as it had been,
Lying down on the sea-shore
Told us the whole sad story.

Down below this cliff,
Multitudinous the lives
That people lost here,
Where the ocean is so deep
And the seas are blue and clear.

Visiting the settled areas of Chifuri.
Where the fields of maize
Follow one another at
Nasu Mountain's foot,
I visited the settlers
Who had endured those hard days.
Preparing for the Ceremony of Announcement of the Wedding-date
The day my daughter
Goes in marriage will come soon -
Along with my child
I go a path at morning
Made sweet by the fragrant olive.
(Notes to His Majesty's Waka) :

Note to poem 4 :
The Chifuri settled areas were developed in the highlands at the foot of Nasu Mountain by those who were repatriated from Manchuria in the twenty-first year of Showa(1946) after the end of the war. The name Chifuri comes from that of the Chifuri settlers group in Manchuria.

Year-end Presentation of Three Waka Poems by Her Majesty the Empress

At the Imperial Stock-Farm
On the pasture path
The girls on bicycles far ahead
Turn around to call -
They are saying something but
Only their laughter reaches us
The Island of Saipan
At the end of this island
Those women with determination
Kicked the cliff and jumped
Ah, sad to think of the power
Of their soft foot-soles.
Princess Nori
To me your mother
From a distance you would call
Running up to me -
I would love to embrace you -
Those days I keep in my heart.
(Notes to Her Majesty's Waka) :

Note to poem 1 :
In March 2005, when Their Majestie were at the Imperial Stock-Farm in Takanezawa, the Princesses, riding their bicycles far ahead of them, turned round to tell them somehing, but the words were indistinct and only the happy laughing voices reached them. Her Majesty composed this poem on this scene.

Note to poem 2 :
In June 2005, sixty years after the end of the war, Their Majesties went on a memorial trip to the Island of Saipan. This poem was composed by Her Majesty, remembering the women who threw themselves from a precipice at the end of the island in the desperate war situations.

Note to poem 3 :
In November 2005, Princess Nori got married to Mr. Yosiki Kuroda. Her Majesty composed this poem remembering the days when the Princess was still small, and thinking in her heart of the Princess who was going to be married.

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