春日野の若紫のすり衣
しのぶのみだれかぎり知られず
しのぶのみだれかぎり知られず
- Roma-ji
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Kasugano no wakamurasaki no surigoromo
shinobu no midare kagiri shirarezu - English Translation
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Like the pale young purple of Kasuga Plain,
a robe rubbed with dye—my hidden thoughts are tangled beyond all measure.
- Meaning
- Like the young purple of Kasuga Plain, you are fresh and beautiful; loving you in secret, my heart is tangled without limit, like the twisted pattern of a robe rubbed with dye.
- Commentary
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Episode One: "Shinobu no midare"
Long ago, a man, having come of age, went hawking to villages around the capital at Nara.
There he found two sisters, graceful and youthful, and ended up peering at them from between objects. His feelings were stirred by their charm, and he cut the hem of the hunting robe he was wearing—dyed in the shinobu-rubbing pattern—and sent this poem.
The shinobu-rubbing is a garment pattern made by rubbing with the shinobu plant, in which the design becomes twisted and tangled. The poem’s phrase “shinobu no midare” expresses the turmoil of a heart that longs for the sisters in secret, tangled like the pattern of shinobu-rubbing.
- Source
- Ise Monogatari
- Other
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- Those who come to my dwelling to view the blossoms in passing— when the blossoms fall, will they then be missed?
- Where no one comes to see them, mountain-village cherry blossoms— let them bloom only after the others have fallen.
- In Michinoku, the shinobu-rubbed pattern— for whose sake did it begin to tangle? It was not I who did so.
- Neither waking nor sleeping, I spent the night till dawn; calling it a thing of spring, I gazed away the hours.