咲きにほひ風まつほどの山ざくら
人の世よりはひさしかりけり
人の世よりはひさしかりけり
- Roma-ji
-
Sakinioi kaze matsu hodo no yamazakura hito no yo yori wa hisashikarikeri
- English Translation
-
Blossoming, and then
waiting only for the wind
these mountain cherries
turn out, after all, to last
longer than a human life
- Meaning
- Blossoming and then waiting only for the wind — these mountain cherries turn out, after all, to last longer than a human life.
- Commentary
-
71 Mountain Cherries Waiting for the Wind
The Prince of the Ministry of Ceremonial died at the end of the second month, when the cherries were at their height, and the Middle Counsellor of Tsutsumi composed "Sakinioi kaze matsu hodo no yamazakura hito no yo yori wa hisashikarikeri". The Minister of the Right of Sanjō replied with "Haruharu no hana wa chiru tomo sakinubeshi mata aigataki hito no yo zo uki". That is the whole of the section.
The Prince of the Ministry of Ceremonial headed that ministry and appears in the seventeenth through twentieth sections and in the fortieth. The Middle Counsellor of Tsutsumi is Fujiwara no Kanesuke, who took his name from his residence near the embankment of the Kamo river; he appears in the thirty-fifth, thirty-sixth and forty-fifth sections and is counted among the thirty-six poetic immortals. The Minister of the Right of Sanjō is Fujiwara no Sadakata, named for his residence at Sanjō, who appears in the twenty-ninth section; the Fujiwara no Asatada of the sixth section was his son.
The setting is the time of the prince's death, at the end of the second month, when the cherries were at their height.
What prompted the poem was that his death coincided with the height of the blossom. A flower with nothing left to do but fall stands in the same scene as the man who has died.
The Minister of the Right answered with a poem of his own, and the exchange closes the section. This poem was later included in the Shinchokusen-shū.
The first line means blossoming and glowing with colour; the verb is used of a colour showing at its brightest.
Mountain cherries waiting for the wind are cherries at their height with nothing before them but scattering. The cherry had long been the figure for what does not last.
The closing says they last longer than a human life, its final verb marking the recognition.
The very emblem of transience turns out to outlast a man. By bringing in the cherry and then placing a human life below it, the poem states a death without using a single word of mourning.
- Source
- Yamato Monogatari
- Other
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- Taking the sweetfish as they lie asleep in the shallows of Kamo I stayed awake the whole night Did I appear in your dreams
- Station, station, at Shinozuka — and station by station I watched and waited for you, who had already come to nothing
- Spring after spring the flowers scatter, and yet they will surely bloom on It is the life of a man never met again, that hurts
- The pond is a glass still, just as it always was and it is that you who looked into it are gone that makes the sorrow of it