These are the 100 poems behind karuta — the card game from the anime Chihayafuru — chosen near Kyoto over 800 years ago, and still memorized by children across Japan today. This is one of them.
What is Hyakunin Isshu? Read the full guide
The poem
かささぎの 渡せる橋に おく霜の 白きを見れば 夜ぞ更けにける
Romaji: Kasasagi no / wataseru hashi ni / oku shimo no / shiroki o mireba / yo zo fukenikeru
When I see the white frost lying on the bridge the magpies spread,
I know the night has grown deep.
Who was Ōtomo no Yakamochi?
Ōtomo no Yakamochi (718–785), here given the court title Chūnagon Yakamochi, was one of the principal poets — and a chief compiler — of the Man’yōshū, Japan’s oldest poetry anthology. He stands at the very foundation of Japanese verse.
Meaning & background
The “magpie bridge” summons one of East Asia’s most beloved legends: the star-crossed lovers of Tanabata, allowed to meet just once a year across a bridge of magpies’ wings spanning the Milky Way. Seeing frost glitter white on a palace bridge in the dead of night, the poet feels the cold, the lateness, and the echo of that celestial romance all at once — a whole sky of myth folded into a single frosted railing.
The commemorative medal
[ メダル画像をここに挿入 / alt: “Hyakunin Isshu Poem 6 Ōtomo no Yakamochi commemorative brass medal” ]
Each poem in the Hyakunin Isshu is cast as a 31mm brass commemorative medal, struck by master craftsmen in Japan — the poem and its poet pressed into metal that will not fade.
Explore the series
Poem 5 (Sarumaru Dayū) · Poem 7 (Abe no Nakamaro) · What is Hyakunin Isshu? Full guide