O blossoms, do not
hold a grudge against the wind
from the Kamo stream—
even it could not hold back
the falling of your petals
- Meaning
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Cherry blossoms, bear no grudge against the river wind of Kamo. Not even that wind had the power to keep you from falling.
- Commentary
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Volume One: Shishigatani
As Taira dominance advanced, the Major Counselor Fujiwara no Narichika set his heart on the post of Commander of the Left. In practice the position was almost certain to go to the Taira. Turning his hopes over to the gods, Narichika engaged a hundred monks at the Iwashimizu Hachiman Shrine on Otokoyama to read the Great Perfection of Wisdom Sutra for seven days.
In the midst of this, three mountain doves flew into the mandarin tree before the Kōra Shrine within the precincts and killed one another. Since the dove was held to be the foremost messenger of the Great Bodhisattva Hachiman, people were unnerved and had a divination made. The answer came back: signs of upheaval across the realm; ministers should keep to themselves.
Narichika would not give up. He began going by night to the Upper Shrine at Kamo, seven nights running. On the seventh night, asleep at home, he dreamed that the doors of the shrine's treasure hall opened and a clear voice spoke this poem.
Even after so plain a warning, his ambition only burned hotter. He shut a ritualist inside the hollow of a great cedar behind the treasure hall and had him pray a hundred days for the fulfillment of his desire. Lightning then struck the cedar and nearly carried fire to the shrine buildings; the priests came running and dragged the ritualist out of the hollow and drove him off. In the end Shigemori was made Commander of the Left and Munemori Commander of the Right. Narichika's discontent hardened into hatred of the Taira, and led at last to the conspiracy at Shishigatani.
On its surface the poem speaks to falling blossoms, telling them not to blame the river wind. But since Narichika heard it as an oracle, the blossom is Narichika himself and the wind is the Taira.
What it says is that falling is fated, and not the wind's doing. He has failed to gain office not because the Taira blocked him but because that is how things have fallen out—so bear no grudge. The whole poem rests on those three words.
Narichika heard none of it. A man who fails to receive a divine warning and walks on into ruin is a pattern the Tale of the Heike uses again and again, and this verse stands as its first instance.
sakurabana……cherry blossoms; here a figure for Narichika himself.
Kamo……both the Kamo River and the Kamo Shrine.
uramu na yo……do not bear a grudge.
e koso……with a negative, expresses impossibility: cannot.
todomezarikere……was unable to hold back.
Daihannyakyō……the Great Perfection of Wisdom Sutra, in six hundred scrolls.
Kamisha……the Kamo Wakeikazuchi Shrine, today's Kamigamo Shrine.
gohōden……the hall housing the deity's sacred object.
Hachiman Daibosatsu……the deity of Iwashimizu, regarded as protector of warrior houses.
kitōshi……an ascetic who performs rites of invocation.
- Source
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Heike Monogatari
- Other
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