[Poem by Yamabe no Akahito on viewing Mount Fuji]
Since the distant time when heaven and earth were parted, godlike, high and noble, stands the lofty peak of Fuji in Suruga. When I look up at it far across the sky, the light of the sun crossing the heavens is hidden by it, and the light of the shining moon cannot be seen. Even the white clouds stop, unable to pass, and snow falls on it in every season. Of this lofty peak of Fuji let us tell and tell again, for ever.
[Envoy]
Coming out from Tago Bay to where the view opens, I look, and pure white, the snow has fallen on the high peak of Fuji.
Yamabe no Akahito was a court poet ranked with Kakinomoto no Hitomaro and later revered as a "saint of poetry." The poem is thought to have been composed when Akahito, traveling to the eastern provinces, looked up at Mount Fuji from Tago Bay in Suruga.
The long poem piles image on image to praise Fuji as a mountain of the gods: holy since the creation of heaven and earth, so high that it hides the sun and moon, so vast that not even the clouds can cross it. The envoy turns and paints vividly the snow-white Fuji that leaps into view the moment the scene opens up. The words "coming out, I look" hold the surprise and wonder of leaving the coastal road.
The envoy was later taken into the Shin Kokinshu and the Hyakunin Isshu as "Coming out on Tago Bay, I look: on the white peak of Fuji, the snow keeps falling," and became widely loved. The Man'yoshu has more than ten poems on Fuji, and most convey the mystery and awe of a mountain that was still sending up smoke at the time.