When I think back on
that time we came in a train
with hollyhock worn,
it is hard to bear it now,
this sacred fence at Kamo
- Meaning
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Remembering the time we rode here in procession with hollyhock in our caps, I find this sacred fence at Kamo hard to look on.
- Commentary
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Part One: Suma
On the way to the northern hills the party came within sight of the Lower Kamo Shrine. Among the attendants was a Lieutenant of the Right Guards who had once served as a temporary escort on the day of the purification. Stripped of his post for his association with Genji and left with nowhere to go, he had joined the retinue. Dismounting to lead the horse, he remembered that day and spoke this poem. Genji, thinking what it must cost him, dismounted too and made his reverence at the shrine.
"Coming in a train" is the splendid procession of the Kamo festival. "With hollyhock worn" summons the festival scene of the Aoi chapter directly. "Sono kami" is that former time. "Mizugaki" is the fence around a shrine, and the poem sets a shrine that has not changed against men whose circumstances have. That the fall from splendor is told from the vantage of a single retainer caught in his master's ruin gives the poem its weight.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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