Kasasagi no wataseru hashi no shimo no ue o yowa ni fumiwake koto sara ni koso

English Translation

Over the frost that
lies on the bridge the magpies
spread, at dead of night
I have come treading — and I
came for this and nothing else

Meaning

Over the frost that lies on the bridge the magpies spread, at dead of night, I have come treading — and came for this and nothing else.

Commentary

125 The Bridge of Magpies

The Izumi Commander called at the residence of Fujiwara no Tokihira, Minister of the Left. He had been drinking elsewhere and was tipsy, and the visit came unlooked for, late at night. The minister, taken by surprise, said he wondered where the commander could have been going, and had the doors thrown noisily open; and Mibu no Tadamine, attending on him, knelt at the foot of the steps with a pine torch and offered "Kasasagi no wataseru hashi no shimo no ue o yowa ni fumiwake koto sara ni koso" by way of greeting. The master of the house found this admirable, and they drank and made music the whole night through; he gave gifts to the commander and a reward to Tadamine as well. This Tadamine had a daughter, and when a man asked for her in marriage he answered that it was an excellent proposal; but when the man wrote to ask when the match might go forward, Tadamine replied with "Waga yado no hitomura susuki urawakami musubi toki ni wa madashikarikeri". She was in truth still a very small girl. That is the whole of the section.
The Izumi Commander is Fujiwara no Sadakuni, elder brother of Sadakata, the Minister of the Right of Sanjō, who appears in the twenty-ninth, seventy-first and ninety-first sections. Mibu no Tadamine was one of the compilers of the Kokin-shū. Fujiwara no Tokihira rose to Minister of the Left, appears in the fourteenth section as the husband of the Lady of the North at Hon'in, and is named in the hundred and twenty-fourth.
The setting is Tokihira's residence, late at night, at the commander's unlooked-for arrival. The frost tells us it is winter.
What prompted the poem was the minister's remark wondering where his guest had been going. Tadamine knelt at the foot of the steps with a torch and offered it as his greeting.
The minister found it admirable; the night became a party, and both the commander and Tadamine were given presents. A single poem made the occasion.

The bridge of magpies is the one the birds were said to make with their wings across the River of Heaven at Tanabata; by extension the word was used of the steps of the palace.
The frost lies on that bridge, so that a real winter night and a legend of the sky lie one over the other.
The fourth line puts a figure treading through the frost at midnight.
The closing breaks off on the word for deliberately: he came for this and nothing else. The host's suggestion that they had merely dropped in is met head on. Comparing the steps of the house to the bridge of heaven flatters the host, and an attendant answers on the instant — and out of it comes a night's entertainment.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

Other