If one broke it off
would the fragrance be the more
for the closer look
then take on a little color
first blossom of the plum tree
- Meaning
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If one broke it off, would the fragrance be greater for the nearer view? Then take on a little color, first blossom of the plum.
- Commentary
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Part Three: Takekawa
After the death of the Chancellor Higekuro, Tamakazura was left with three sons and two daughters and gave all her thought to propping up a failing house. Her elder daughter was sought by both the reigning Emperor and the Retired Emperor Reizei, and Kaoru and the Chamberlain Lieutenant, a son of Yugiri, were drawn to her as well. In the First Month of Kaoru's fifteenth year, when he came in a little behind the other young gentlemen, the young women declared that he was of another order altogether, and said, to the embarrassment of anyone listening, that he was the one they would set beside a daughter of the house. Tamakazura was in her chapel and called him in; he came up by the eastern steps and sat before the blind at the doorway. The young plum in the garden was still tight in bud and the warbler's first notes were unhurried. The women teased him with idle talk, but he stayed brief and reserved, and a senior gentlewoman known as Saisho, dissatisfied with that, addressed this poem to him. He answered at once, and the women grew bolder still.
The first blossom of the plum is Kaoru, and the youth of the tree in bud is his own. "Iromeke" is both to take on color and to behave with a little gallantry, so the poem urges the sober young man to unbend. "If one broke it off and looked" draws on Sosei's Kokinshu poem about the plum whose color and scent are never enough until the branch is broken off, and the old language of breaking off a branch stands here for coming together with someone. It is a piece of play from an older gentlewoman to a young lord, and it opens the poems of the Takekawa chapter.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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