How must it fare with
the one who lives in that far
village where the stream
is rising, in a season
of unclearing endless rain
- Meaning
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How must it fare with the one who lives in that far village where the stream is rising, in a season of endless rain that will not clear?
- Commentary
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Part Three: Ukifune
About the same time as Niou's letter, this came to Uji from Kaoru. Anxious that the long rains were raising the Uji river, he thinks of the woman he has left in that distant place. The new house in the capital was going forward, and Kaoru, suspecting nothing, was waiting for the day he would bring her there. With these two letters before her Ukifune wrote her answers, and in the writing let something of her cornered mind escape.
Mizu masaru is the rising of a river, and is taken up again in her later mikasa masarite. "The one who lives in that far village" is Ukifune at Uji. Kakikurasu is to pass one's days in low spirits. It is a quiet poem of concern, and the shape of the chapter's tragedy is that this very concern is a cause of her suffering.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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