On Oshio hill,
where the snow lies deep, the pheasant
rises and leaves tracks—
follow, today, those old tracks,
and look for what went before
- Meaning
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On Oshio hill, where the snow lies deep, the pheasant rises and leaves its tracks; today, follow those old tracks and see what precedent there was.
- Commentary
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Part One: Miyuki
In the Twelfth Month of Genji's thirty-sixth year the Reizei Emperor made a progress to Oharano. Hardly a soul stayed home; from the Rokujo estate too the ladies went out in a train of carriages. The procession left the palace at dawn, turned west from Suzaku along Gojo, and as far as the Katsura River the carriages of onlookers stood without a gap. Princes and senior nobles, down to courtiers of the fifth and sixth ranks, wore blue robes over grape-colored under-gowns; the falconers were dressed in printed cloth such as one never sees; and with the snow drifting down, even the road looked elegant. Tamakazura went to watch, and saw her true father, the Minister of the Center, for the first time—but was struck still more by the Emperor in his red robe. When the party reached the moor and changed their dress, wine and fruit arrived from the Rokujo estate; Genji had been asked to attend and had pleaded a day of abstinence. In return the Emperor sent him a brace of pheasants by a Chamberlain of the Left Gate Guards, and with them this poem.
"Oshio hill" lies west of Oharano and is a poetic place of the district. "The tracks the rising pheasant leaves" lays the bird's marks in the snow over the precedents of former progresses, so that "tracks" carries both senses. Look up, he says, whether a Chancellor ever attended such a progress—and behind that lies a warm reproach for staying away. To send the day's own game, wrapped in the district's own place name and the snow of the hour, is a courtesy poem exactly as it should be. That the Emperor should address Genji so is itself a quiet mark of what lies between them.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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