Osoku toku tsui ni sakikeru ume no hana ta ga ueokishi tane ni ka aruramu

English Translation

Late or early, they
have bloomed at last, these blossoms
of the plum — and whose
hand was it, I wonder, that
put the seed into the ground

Meaning

Late or early, the plum blossoms have opened at last. Whose hand, I wonder, planted the seed?

Commentary

120 The Plum That Bloomed at Last

The Chancellor Fujiwara no Tadahira had held ministerial office for a long time, while Fujiwara no Nakahira, known as the Minister of Biwa, had not been able to become a minister at all; and at the celebration when at last he did, Tadahira put a plum spray in his hair and composed "Osoku toku tsui ni sakikeru ume no hana ta ga ueokishi tane ni ka aruramu". When an account of that day, with the poem, was written out to be sent to the High Priestess of Ise, Yoshiko, a daughter of Fujiwara no Sadakata, added "Ikade kaku toshigiri mo senu tane mogana areyuku niwa no kage to tanomamu" to it. Her wish was answered: Fujiwara no Saneyori began to visit her, she was blessed with children, and the family prospered. At that time the High Priestess sent "Hanazakari haru wa mi ni komu toshigiri mo sezu to iu tane wa oinu to ka kiku". That is the whole of the section.
Fujiwara no Tadahira rose to Chancellor and appears in the ninety-seventh through ninety-ninth sections. Fujiwara no Nakahira was his elder brother by the same mother, and appears in the sixty-eighth section as the lord of Biwa, exchanging poems with Toshiko. Yoshiko was a daughter of Fujiwara no Sadakata and appears as the Lady of the Bedchamber of Sanjō in the ninety-fourth through ninety-sixth sections. Fujiwara no Saneyori was Tadahira's eldest son, and sends her a poem in the ninety-sixth.
The setting is the celebration of Nakahira's appointment as minister. The plum tells us it is spring.
What prompted the poem was that celebration. Tadahira composed it with a plum spray in his hair.
The poem was written into a letter to be sent to the High Priestess, and the section goes on from there to Yoshiko's poem. It was later included in the Shinkokin-shū.

The first line means late and early together, and holds the plain fact that the elder brother came to office late and the younger early.
The plum blossoms have opened at last, a flowering long waited for, laid over the brother's appointment.
The closing asks whose hand planted the seed, in the grammar of a wondering question.
By asking after the planter he indicates, without saying it, that the brothers came from one stock. At a celebration he says that late or early they grew from the same seed; it is a poem of compliment to an elder brother. The word for seed is what the two poems that follow take up.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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