[From the poetry contest at the empress's palace in the Kanpyo era, Ki no Tomonori]
The cherry blossoms blooming on the slopes of Yoshino: I can only mistake them for snow.
[Composed on seeing snow falling on a journey to Yamato, Sakanoue no Korenori]
As dawn faintly breaks, so white I take it for the light of the morning moon: the snow fallen on the village of Yoshino.
Until the Nara period, Yoshino was the site of a detached palace that Emperor Tenmu and Empress Jito visited again and again, and in the Man'yoshu it is sung as an immortals' land of clear rivers and mountains. But in the Heian-period Kokinshu, Yoshino became a mountain village deep in snow, far from the capital. "The white snow of the mountains of Yoshino" stood for the harshness of winter and a loneliness no visitor came to break.
Tomonori's poem builds on this image of "snowy Yoshino," seeing the cherry trees in full white bloom as snow. Seeing flowers as snow and snow as flowers is common in the Kokinshu, prized as an intelligent and graceful way of speaking. In time Yoshino changed from a famous place for snow to a famous place for cherry blossoms. In later ages the poet Saigyo loved its cherries and wrote many poems about them, and Toyotomi Hideyoshi held a grand blossom-viewing party there.
Korenori's poem catches the surprise of seeing everything glowing white in the half-light of dawn, taking it for moonlight, and finding it was snow. It was later chosen for the Hyakunin Isshu. This layering of moonlight and the whiteness of snow also shows the Kokinshu's sense of beauty well.