When the wind comes up
even the blossoms of the waves
take on their color—
is this, then, the very place
they call the Cape of Yamabuki?
- Meaning
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When the wind comes up, even the blossoms of the waves take on that color—is this, then, the famous Cape of Yamabuki?
- Commentary
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Part One: Kocho
Past the twentieth of the Third Month in Genji's thirty-sixth year, the garden before the spring quarter was lovelier than ever in the colors of its flowers and the voices of its birds, so that those in the other quarters of the Rokujo estate wondered whether spring there had somehow not yet passed its height. Genji had Chinese-style boats built, and on the day they were first put out on the water he summoned the officers of the Music Office for music upon the water. Wishing to show the spring to the Empress, who was down from the palace in the autumn quarter, he had her young women taken aboard, rowed round the point of the hill that divided the quarters, and brought to the eastern fishing pavilion of the spring quarter. With the dragon and phoenix prows dressed in Chinese fashion, and boys with their hair in loops handling the poles, those who had not seen such a thing felt they had come to a foreign country. Drawing in under the rocks of the island and looking about, they found even the set stones exactly as in a picture; and among the poems they made then was this.
"Blossoms of the waves" likens white breaking water to flowers. Here the yellow of the kerria on the bank is reflected in that whiteness, and "take on their color" is the sight of it. "The Cape of Yamabuki" is held to be a place in Omi; the poet produces a place name that bears the flower's own name and lays it over what lies before her. "Ko ya" is: is this the very—with a note of wonder. The delight is that the water seen close from a boat looks like the famous place itself; and in that the whole conceit of this garden is caught.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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