Kataoka ni warabi moezu wa tazunetsutsu kokoroyari ni ya wakana tsumamashi

English Translation

If on the hillside
no bracken has put out shoots
then I shall go and
look, and look again, and pick
young herbs to divert myself

Meaning

If no bracken has come up on the hillside, then I shall go looking, and looking again, and pick young herbs to divert myself.

Commentary

86 Young Herbs

Early in the First Month, Taira no Kanemori called at the Major Counsellor's residence, and in the middle of their talk he was told, in passing, to make a poem; so he composed "Kyō yori wa ogi no yakehara kakiwakete wakana tsumi ni to tare o sasowamu". The Major Counsellor, impressed, answered with "Kataoka ni warabi moezu wa tazunetsutsu kokoroyari ni ya wakana tsumamashi". That is the whole of the section.
Taira no Kanemori is one of the thirty-six poetic immortals; he exchanges poems with the Lady of Hyōe in the fifty-sixth section and with Taira no Nakaki's daughter in the fifty-seventh, the fifty-eighth tells of his time in Michinoku, and in the seventy-second he composes on the Teiji palace. A Major Counsellor stood next below the Minister of the Right in the Council of State.
The setting is the same day at the Major Counsellor's residence.
What prompted the poem is Kanemori's, "Kyō yori wa ogi no yakehara kakiwakete wakana tsumi ni to tare o sasowamu", which impressed him.
This reply closes the eighty-sixth section. The prose passes no judgement; the section consists of the exchange alone.

The hillside of the first line is a slope of the kind where bracken grows.
The second sets up a condition contrary to fact: if the bracken has not come up.
The third line means going about looking, with a grammar of repetition that puts a figure searching over the ground.
The closing phrase means to divert oneself, to pass the time. Where the other poem asked whom to invite, this one answers that if there is no bracken he will pick herbs — which can be read as accepting the invitation or as turning it aside. Taking up the words for young herbs makes it a properly matched reply.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

Other