[Poem composed on the evening of the first of the third month of Tenpyo Shoho 2, gazing at the peach and plum blossoms in the spring garden]
The spring garden glows with crimson. On the path lit red beneath the peach blossoms, a girl has stepped out and stands.
[Poem on picking katakago flowers]
Like the countless warriors of the old phrase, crowds of girls jostle to draw water, and by the temple well bloom the katakago flowers.
Otomo no Yakamochi became governor of Etchu at twenty-nine and spent five years at the provincial office (today's Fushiki in Takaoka, Toyama). Far from the capital, in the north country, he met the grand landscapes of Mount Tate, Mount Futagami and the sea of Nago, and left some 220 poems. Of all the poems in the Man'yoshu, an unusually large number are Yakamochi's from his Etchu years.
The peach-blossom poem paints, like a single picture, a spring garden dyed all in crimson and a girl standing within it. Its rich composition recalls Chinese paintings of a beauty beneath a tree, and it is known as one of Yakamochi's most colorful poems.
The katakago poem, on the other hand, sets the lively voices of girls gathered at a temple well in early spring in snow country beside the small pale purple flowers blooming, heads bowed, at their feet. The katakago (dogtooth violet) announces spring in the north and was rarely seen in the capital. You can feel Yakamochi's fresh surprise at noticing an unfamiliar flower.
In the few days from the first of the third month, when these two poems were written, Yakamochi composed many poems one after another, the peak of his writing in Etchu.