山桜匂ふあたりに尋ね来て
同じかざしを折りてけるかな
同じかざしを折りてけるかな
- Roma-ji
-
Yamazakura niou atari ni tazune kite
onaji kazashi o oritekeru kana - English Translation
-
I have come to seek
where the mountain cherry glows,
and have broken off
a spray of the very same
blossom for us both to wear
- Meaning
- I have come to where the mountain cherry glows, and have broken off a spray of the same blossom for us both to wear.
- Commentary
-
Part Three: Shiigamoto
Stopping at Uji, Niou broke off a flowering branch and sent it in to the sisters with this poem. That they too are of the imperial house he conveys by saying that the spray they will wear is the same as his. Naka no Kimi answered, and the letters between Niou and Naka no Kimi begin here.
The place where the mountain cherry glows is both the spot where the flowers are and, by implication, the house where the beautiful sisters live. Kazashi is a flower or spray worn in the hair or at the cap, and "the same kazashi" means the same blood. To break off a flower also suggests binding a woman to oneself, so that for a first letter this is a forward poem. It marks the point at which Niou enters the story of the Uji sisters.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- There is a voice that blows the spring haze open on the wind off the hills— yet what I see, set apart, are white waves in the distance
- Though waves lie between the near shore and the far shore, still, I ask of you, blow across and back again, O river wind of Uji
- One who breaks a spray to wear it, and in passing goes by the rough hedge of a mountain rustic's house— just a traveller of spring
- Though this hut of grass should fall to ruin when I am gone from the world, this one word, I would believe, will neither wither nor part