This spring it is on
the willow buds that the beads
are strung one by one,
since I do not know where the
flowers that bloomed and fell have gone
- Meaning
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This spring the beads are strung along the willow buds, for I do not know where the flowers that bloomed and fell have gone.
- Commentary
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Part Two: Kashiwagi
The Ichijo lady answered Yugiri's poem with this one. Told that the cherry has bloomed as ever, she says that here there is nothing but weeping, and lets out her fear for her daughter's future. The Princess had lost her husband and was left with her mother and no one to stand behind her. This mother's anxiety is one of the doors through which Yugiri comes further in. Afterward he went on to the house of Kashiwagi's father, the retired minister.
"Beads strung along the willow buds" is dew threaded on a branch like a string of jewels, and it is a way of speaking of tears. "The flowers that bloomed and fell" are cherry blossoms gone almost as soon as they came—Kashiwagi, dead young, and also her daughter, whose course is now uncertain. "I do not know where they have gone" is not knowing what lies ahead. Taking his cherry and turning to a willow, she keeps to the same spring scene and pulls it over to the side of grief.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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