Kakekotoba as ruby

[murata2makoto]

Ono no Komachi composed the following waka in the 9th century.

あきかせにあふたのみこそかなしけれわか身むなしくなりぬと思へは

This poem is difficult to interpret because it makes use of Kakekotoba (pivot words).

Among several kakekotoba in the poem, we will focus on たのみ. It can mean “頼み” (hope, reliance) and also “田の実” (first-fruits offering). We can use ruby annotations to explicitly represent these different readings:

We can attach 頼み(hope) as a ruby annotation to たのみ.

あきかせにあふたのみ頼みこそかなしけれわか身むなしくなりぬと思へは

We can also attach 田の実 (first-fruits offering) as a ruby annotation.

あきかせにあふたのみ田の実こそこそかなしけれわか身むなしくなりぬと思へは

We can even use double-sided ruby, showing both simultaneously.

Here is a translation of this poem in English by ChatGPT:

Ah— the autumn wind.
What it takes from the fields, it takes from the heart.
The grain once meant to sustain a life,
the trust once meant to sustain a soul—
both gone.
And I am left here, emptied,
hollow as the season itself.

When read aloud, the poem interpreted with 頼み and the poem interpreted with 田の実 should have different accent patterns in Japanese.

Using ruby to represent kakekotoba is not common, but it is worth discussing because this usage places unique requirements on ruby text-to-speech (TTS) processing.