Onaji e o wakite shimo oku aki nareba hikari mo tsuraku omooyuru kana

English Translation

An autumn that lays
its frost on one branch and not
another — and so
even the light of the sun
comes to seem hard to bear now

Meaning

It is an autumn that sets its frost on one branch and not another; and so even the sunlight has come to seem hard to bear.

Commentary

51 The Same Branch

From the High Priestess of Kamo to the emperor came "Onaji e o wakite shimo oku aki nareba hikari mo tsuraku omooyuru kana", and the emperor's reply was "Hana no iro o mite mo shirinamu hatsushimo no kokoro wakite wa okaji to zo omou". That is the whole of the section.
The High Priestess of Kamo was an unmarried imperial princess serving at that shrine. In the forty-ninth section the emperor's own daughter holds that office and exchanges poems with him over chrysanthemums. The emperor here is the same one.
The setting is the High Priestess's residence. The frost in the poem tells us it is late autumn.
The prose records nothing of what prompted it. In the forty-ninth section the same two exchange poems over chrysanthemums, and this is placed as a continuation of that.
The emperor answered with a poem of his own, and the exchange closes the section. Between the forty-ninth and this one stands the fiftieth, giving the poem of a priest who serves the Buddha.

The word in the first line means both a branch and a tie of kinship, so that one branch and one family stand together in it.
The word for frost in the second line is also an emphatic particle, so that laying frost and singling out are heard at once.
From the sight of frost settling on part of a branch and not the rest, the poem moves to children of one parent treated differently. It is a woman set apart from the world as a High Priestess who says this.
The closing exclaims that even the light has become hard to bear. That the very sun which would melt the frost should be resented is where the feeling of the excluded shows.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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