The capital at
Shiga has gone to ruin,
and yet the mountain
cherries are blooming here still,
just as they bloomed long ago
- Meaning
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The capital at Shiga has long gone to ruin, and yet the mountain cherries bloom here still, just as they bloomed long ago.
- Commentary
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Volume Seven: Tadanori Leaves the Capital
As the Taira were leaving the capital, Tadanori, Governor of Satsuma, turned back from somewhere with five retainers, a page, and himself—seven riders—and went to the house of Shunzei of the Third Rank at Gojō. The gate was shut and would not open. When he gave his name, Shunzei said not to raise an alarm about a fugitive: if it is that man there is no harm; let him in. And he received him.
Tadanori said: for years I have had your instruction in poetry, but these two or three years the disorder in the capital and the provinces has all been my own house's affair, and though I have never thought lightly of you I have not been able to come. The emperor has left the capital and my house's fortune is spent. I had heard an anthology was to be made, and hoped for the honor of a single poem in it, but with the world in turmoil the matter was dropped. If peace returns the anthology will be ordered. If among the poems in this scroll there is one fit for it, and I am granted even a single verse, I shall be glad in the grave and will guard you from afar. So saying, he drew from between the plates of his armor a scroll of more than a hundred poems, the best of what he had written, and handed it over.
Shunzei opened it and said that having been given such a keepsake he would never treat it lightly, and that Tadanori need have no doubt; and he added that this visit, now of all times, showed feeling so deep that he could hardly hold back his tears. Tadanori was glad. Now, he said, let me sink beneath the waves of the western sea, let my body lie out on the hills—there is nothing in this world I still hold to. Then he took his leave, mounted, tied his helmet cord, and rode west.
Later, when the world had quieted and Shunzei compiled the Senzaishū, he chose from Tadanori's scroll this poem, written on the topic "blossoms at Shiga." But because its author stood under imperial censure, he refrained from giving the name and entered it as by an unknown hand.
Sazanami ya is a fixed epithet attaching to Shiga. The capital at Shiga was Emperor Tenji's palace at Ōtsu, abandoned after the Jinshin war. It had lain in ruins for centuries.
On that ruined ground the mountain cherries bloom as they always did. Human works perish and the blossoms do not: it is the standard form of a poem on a ruined capital. The topic was "blossoms at Shiga," and when it was written it had nothing to do with the fall of the Taira.
But once Tadanori, leaving the capital, entrusts the scroll, and Shunzei selects this verse, its meaning changes entirely. The ruined capital is no longer Shiga but the Kyoto he is riding away from, and the cherries that bloom as they always did become poetry itself, unchanging. It is the clearest instance of what the Tale of the Heike shows again and again: that where a poem stands alters what it says.
And then the name is erased. It entered an imperial anthology as the work of an unknown hand. What Tadanori risked his life for was to leave his name; what remained was the poem, and not the name. The tale records this without comment and closes the chapter. He is killed in Volume Nine, and only a paper tied to his quiver makes his identity known.
sazanami ya……a fixed epithet attaching to Shiga.
Shiga no miyako……Emperor Tenji's palace at Ōtsu in Ōmi.
are ni shi wo……though it has fallen to ruin.
mukashi nagara……as of old; some read a pun on Mount Nagara.
Gojō Sanmi Shunzei……Fujiwara no Shunzei, compiler of the Senzaishū.
senshū……the compiling of an imperial poetry anthology.
hikiawase……the seam where the plates of a cuirass meet.
chokkan……to stand under imperial censure.
Senzaishū……the Senzai wakashū.
ochiudo……one fleeing after defeat.
- Source
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Heike Monogatari
- Other
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