Fuji no hana iro no asaku mo miyuru kana utsuroinikeru nagori narubeshi

English Translation

The wisteria's
colour looks a little pale
to me now, I find
This must be what remains of
blooms that have already turned

Meaning

The wisteria's colour looks pale to me now. This must be what remains after the blossom has already turned.

Commentary

61 The Wisteria That Remains

At the Teiji palace, a number of the retired emperor's ladies had rooms and lived there; but after some years, when the Kawara mansion had been beautifully built, he had a room made ready for the Kyōgoku Lady alone and moved there. It was spring. Those left behind felt it keenly. High nobles came calling, and as they walked about the garden looking at the wisteria in full bloom at the Teiji palace, remarking to one another that he had gone without even seeing the flowers at their height, they found a letter tied to a wisteria branch. Opening it, they read "Yo no naka no asaki se ni nomi nariyukeba kinō no fuji no hana to koso mire". They were struck by the poem and moved by it, but no one could tell which woman had written it. One of the nobles then composed "Fuji no hana iro no asaku mo miyuru kana utsuroinikeru nagori narubeshi". That is the whole of the section.
The Teiji palace was the residence of Emperor Uda after his abdication. The Kyōgoku Lady was a daughter of the Minister of the Left, Fujiwara no Tokihira, and appears in the third section. The Kawara mansion had been the residence of Minamoto no Tōru, rebuilt after being handed on. High nobles were officials of the third rank and above, together with consultants. Of the woman who tied the poem to the branch, the prose says only that no one knew who she was.
The setting is the same garden, after the nobles had read the poem tied to the branch.
What prompted this one was that no one knew who had written the first. There was no identified person to answer, and one of the company composed all the same.
The section closes with this poem. That a reply should be made without a known addressee is what marks this section.

The opening remarks that the wisteria looks pale in colour, taking her word for shallowness and turning it into paleness.
The verb in the fourth line means both that a colour has faded and that someone has moved house, so that the fading of the flowers and the retired emperor's move to Kawara are held in one word.
What follows supposes that this is what remains, in the grammar of what must be so.
Looking at wisteria at its height, he says it must be the remnant of a bloom already past. He takes her statement and returns it to the scenery — which is as far as a reply can go when the writer is unknown.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

Other