Warbler on a Plum Branch
Utagawa Hiroshige Japanese
Not on view
Poems included on Hiroshige’s bird-and-flower compositions are usually unsigned, but sometimes they are by famous poets, such as this verse by Suganuma Kyokusui (1659–1717), a poet of the samurai class who was a pupil and patron of Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694). Here, Kyokusui playfully suggests that the warbler (uguisu) pays its yearly taxes in the spring by generously singing a song on the small grove where it lives.
鶯や 二升五合の 藪年貢
Uguisu ya
masumasu hanjō no
yabu nengu
Oh, the warbler!
It pays a generous tithe
for such a tiny grove.
—Trans. John T. Carpenter
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