女郎花おほかる野辺に宿りせば
あやなくあだの名をやたちなむ
あやなくあだの名をやたちなむ
- Roma-ji
-
Ominaeshi ōkaru nobe ni yadori seba
ayanaku ada no na o ya tachinamu - English Translation
-
If I should lodge there
in fields where maidenflowers
bloom in great numbers,
without cause, a fleeting name
would surely rise about me.
- Meaning
- If I were to stay in fields where many maidenflowers bloom, I would, without reason, gain a reputation for fickle love.
- Commentary
-
Book Four Autumn Poems (Part One)
Since the maidenflower is likened to women, spending a night in a field where many bloom suggests, in playful jest, being surrounded by many women. The poem humorously implies that such a stay would give rise to rumors of promiscuity, though nothing has truly occurred.
“Ayanaku” means without reason.
“Ada” refers to something frivolous or associated with fleeting love.
- Author
- Ono no Yoshizai
- Source
- Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- Maidenflower there— with distaste I pass it by, going on my way;— for it stands upon Mount Otoko, so it seems to me indeed.
- In autumn fields now I shall take my lodging here— maidenflower blooms; dear its very name to me, though I am not on a journey.
- Maidenflowers sway in autumn fields, bent by the wind— so too her heart;— to whom, I wonder, does she give that single, wayward heart?
- Maidenflower, you— hard it is to meet but in the autumn alone;— though you do not grow, in truth, upon Heaven’s river shore.