Haru no no ni midori ni haeru sanekazura waga kimizane to tanomu ikani zo

English Translation

In the fields of spring
the sanekazura shines out
green among the rest
and so I would have you first
of all — what do you say to it

Meaning

In the spring fields the sanekazura shines out green among the rest. So I would have you first of all — what do you say?

Commentary

124 The Sanekazura Vine

While the Lady of the North at Hon'in was still the wife of the Major Counsellor and Governor-General, Heichū, that is Taira no Sadafun, sent her "Haru no no ni midori ni haeru sanekazura waga kimizane to tanomu ikani zo". Poems having passed between them in this way, they spent a night together. Afterwards, when she had become the wife of Fujiwara no Tokihira and was much talked of in the world, Sadafun sent her "Yukusue no sukuse mo shirazu waga mukashi chigirishi koto wa omooyu ya kimi". There were replies to these, and many other poems before and after, but they are not now known. That is the whole of the section.
The Lady of the North at Hon'in was the wife of Fujiwara no Tokihira, and appears in the fourteenth section, where her younger sister Ōtsufune is spoken of. The Major Counsellor and Governor-General held the Dazaifu post together with his rank at court. Heichū is Taira no Sadafun, known as a great lover, who appears in the forty-sixth, sixty-fourth and hundred and third sections.
The setting is the period when she was still the Major Counsellor's wife. The spring fields tell us the season.
The prose records nothing of what prompted it, saying only that Sadafun sent it to her.
Poems having passed between them in this way, they spent a night together. From there the section moves to the poem sent after she became Tokihira's wife.

The sanekazura is an evergreen climbing shrub, and the first part of its name carries the word for lying together, so that it had long been used to bring in the relations of men and women.
Shining green is the gloss of its leaves, laid over the woman herself.
The word he uses for first of all means the central thing, the chief one, and it is drawn out of the plant's own name — the same sound struck twice.
The closing asks her outright. A proposal is made by following the sounds of a plant's name; and that it is addressed to another man's wife is the premise of the section.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

Other