Do you take them for
the common maples of the world—
this brocade laid down
across the garden after
the old example of long ago?

Meaning

Do you take them for the common maples of the world—this garden brocade laid down after the old example of long ago?

Commentary

Part One: Fujiura

　In answer to Suzaku's wistful poem, the Reizei Emperor offered this. His face, growing more finished as he matured, seemed the very image of Genji's; and beside him Yugiri served as Counselor, his own features so like the Emperor's as to be startling—indeed in brightness and beauty Yugiri seemed to surpass him. Yugiri played the flute, the Lesser Captain lent his fine voice to the songs, and it seemed that such houses do bring forth their remarkable men. With this exchange at the progress the chapter of the Wisteria Leaves closes, and Part One is complete.

　"The common maples of the world" are ordinary ones. "Ya miru" is: do you take them for. "The old example" is the precedent of long ago—the Festival of the Maples at Suzaku's own palace. "Hikeru" is arranged in that likeness. "The garden brocade" is the maple-strewn garden seen as brocade. These are no ordinary maples, he says, but a garden laid out after the very festival you once held—an answer that honors and consoles Suzaku. Where the Retired Emperor sang the loneliness of one passing from the scene, the Emperor replies that it is that Retired Emperor's own past glory which today's occasion takes for its model, and so thinks of the older man's heart. At the scene of Genji's fulfilled glory, foretold in his boyhood, the Emperor himself sets down a poem that blesses the continuity of the generations, and Part One quietly comes to its close.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

Do you take them for the common maples of the world— this brocade laid down across the garden after the old example of long ago?

Do you take them for
the common maples of the world—
this brocade laid down
across the garden after
the old example of long ago?