Chiji no iro ni isogishi aki wa suginikeri ima wa shigure ni nani o somemashi

English Translation

The autumn we spent
hurrying with a thousand
colours has gone by
and now, in the cold drizzle
what is left for me to dye

Meaning

The autumn we spent in such a rush, dyeing everything a thousand colours, has gone. Now the cold rains have come, and there is nothing left for me to dye.

Commentary

3 A Thousand Colours

When the late Major Counsellor Minamoto still held the rank of Consultant, the Kyōgoku Lady of the Bedchamber, who was to preside over a celebration for the Teiji retired emperor, sent word to him that she meant to hold such an occasion and asked him to have a branch or two of offerings made up. He had a great number of open-work bamboo baskets made and gave them to Toshiko to dye in various colours. The woven mats too, and all the dyeing, twisting and plaiting, he left entirely in her hands. Everything was finished in haste by the end of the ninth month. Then, on the first day of the tenth month, Toshiko sent "Chiji no iro ni isogishi aki wa suginikeri ima wa shigure ni nani o somemashi" to the man who had kept her working at such speed. While the work was being rushed through, messages had passed between them without a break; afterwards, the business being done, nothing came, and when the end of the twelfth month arrived she sent "Katakake no fune ni ya noreru shiranami no sawagu toki nomi omoiizuru kimi". That too went unanswered, and the year turned. Around the second month he broke off a willow branch from his grounds, one unusually long and supple, and sent it with "Aoyagi no ito uchihaete nodokanaru haruhi shimo koso omoiidekere". Toshiko praised it beyond measure and went on telling the story for years afterwards.
The late Major Counsellor Minamoto is Minamoto no Kiyokage, a son of Emperor Yōzei, who served as Consultant before rising to Major Counsellor; the title used in this section is the Chinese-style name for that earlier post. The Kyōgoku Lady of the Bedchamber was a daughter of the Minister of the Left, Fujiwara no Tokihira, and became a consort of Emperor Uda. Toshiko was the wife of Fujiwara no Chikane, a third-rank officer of the Right Horse Bureau and a son of Fujiwara no Tadafusa. She appears repeatedly in this book as a poet.
The setting is the preparation of offerings for the retired emperor's celebration. The work was finished at the end of the ninth month and the poem sent on the first day of the tenth, exactly at the turn from autumn to winter.
What prompted it was the day the finished goods went back to the man who had commissioned them. The poem went with the delivery.
After this his letters stop. Toshiko sends "Katakake no fune ni ya noreru shiranami no sawagu toki nomi omoiizuru kimi" as well, receives no answer, and has to wait past the New Year for "Aoyagi no ito uchihaete nodokanaru haruhi shimo koso omoiidekere".
This poem was later included in the Shinchokusen-shū.

The autumn spent hurrying with a thousand colours is at once the turning of the leaves and her own work at the dye vats, laid together into a single phrase.
The verb that closes the upper verse carries the force of noticing something late: the season has gone by, and she is only now aware of it.
The lower verse moves into winter with the cold intermittent rains of the season, which carries the sense that the hills have nothing left to colour.
The closing verb is a hesitant one — what should I dye? — and the question is put rather than answered. What has nothing left to dye is not only the hills but a woman whose commission is finished. The idleness that follows completed work is put entirely into the change of season.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

Other