tsunami stone

大津浪記念碑

高き住居は
児孫が和樂
想へ惨禍の
大津浪
此処よ下に家を建てるな
Ohtsunami Kinenhi
Takaki sumai wa
Jison ga waraku-
soo e sanka no
Ohtsunami
Koko yori shimo ni ie wo tateru na
Commemorative stele of the great tsunami
The catastrophic tsunami: the elevation of our dwelling-place left our descendants happy. Do not build houses lower than this place.
(The kana written が here is written on the stele with an old-fashioned one based on the Chinese graph 我 rather than 加. Such forms are now called “hentaigana”. Unicode contains no glyph for this one.)
Comments?

It's true but osoroshii !

@2 osoroshii

One would think so, but apparently not frightening enough to prevent tens of thousands of people from building homes on a plain that had been devastated by a tsunami in the modern era. The ie wo tateru na is about as sternly worded a prohibition as one can say in Japanese, isn't it?

The first four lines look like a waka. But the enjambment of the second and third lines is unusual. Can you think of any more examples?

The first four lines is making a form of dodoitsu (in form of 7-7-7-5), and the fifth line is 7-7, making a form of the last part of waka.

@4 7-7-7-5-7-7
Yes, that’s just how we see it. That’s why we read 住居 in the first line as sumai
instead of jūkyo.
For lurkers, rime plays no role in Japanese verse, but syllable-count is very important. It seems that to keep the second line at 7 syllables, what looks like a single word, warakusou has been split. We wonder how common that is.

Oh, I overlooked a part of your 1st post.
想へ is not soo-e, but omoe, meaning "imagine" or "think".
So it does not split in the middle of a word.

高き住居は
児孫が和樂
想へ惨禍の
大津浪
此処よ下に家を建てるな

Takaki sumai wa
jison ga waraku
omoe sanka no
oo tsunami
kokoyori shimo ni ie wo tateruna

BTW, dodoitsu is not the one I should be mentioning.
Dodoitsu is only referred to love songs.
What I wanted to say was "Jinku" 甚句.

@6
We've seen that parsing elsewhere. We don't buy it. It reverses the SOV word order that is standard in Japanese.
We'd be willing to reconsider our judgment if you could provide examples of a verb in the imperative preceding rather than following its object.

It is standard to have SOV word order, but this is a command to anyone and everyone who reads it. It gives this statement a very strong voice, doesn't it?

・きたれや　みたまよ
・見よ　東海の空あけて
・駆けよ　大和路
・見よ　精鋭の集う処

I can't think of old songs right now...