Shimoyuki no furuya no naka ni hitorine no utsubushizome no asa no kesa nari

English Translation

In an old house where
the frost and the snow come down
sleeping alone — this
is the dark-dyed hempen sur-
plice of my mornings, this

Meaning

In an old house where the frost and snow come down, sleeping alone: this is the dark-dyed hempen surplice of my mornings.

Commentary

173 The Cloth Dyed Dark

The Lesser Captain Yoshimine no Munesada, going somewhere, was caught in heavy rain near Gojō, and took shelter under a ruined gate. Looking in, he saw a house of some five bays with a bark-shingled roof and earthen storehouses beside it, and no one about. Walking in, he saw a plum in beautiful flower by the steps, and heard a warbler. From behind a blind where no one seemed to be, a woman in a pale robe over a darker one, well made and with hair that seemed to reach her full height, said to herself "Yomogi oite aretaru yado o uguisu no hitoku to naku ya tare to ka matan". The Captain answered in a fine voice with "Kitaredomo iishinareneba uguisu no kimi ni tsugeyo to oshiete zo naku", and she, startled, thought that she had been seen in a poor state when she believed no one was there, and fell silent. He came up onto the verandah and sat down. Why does she say nothing, he asked; the rain being what it was, he would stay until it stopped. She answered that it leaked worse there than out in the street. It was about the tenth of the First Month. A cushion was pushed out from behind the blind; he drew it to him and sat. The blind's edging was eaten away in places by bats. Looking within, he saw that the mats and the rest recalled better days and had come to a poor state. As the light failed he slipped inside and would not let her withdraw. She thought it hard, and had no means of preventing him. The rain fell all night, and in the morning the sky cleared a little. When she tried to go in he said only that she should stay. When the day was well up, her parents, having no way to entertain him, kept only the page boy, gave him coarse salt with his wine, and for the Captain picked greens from the wide garden, steamed them, served them in a bowl, and for chopsticks broke off a spray of plum in full flower; and on the petals, in a very fine woman's hand, was written "Kimi ga tame koromo no suso o nurashitsutsu haru no no ni idete tsumeru wakana zo". Reading it he was much moved, drew it to him and ate. She lay down, unbearably ashamed. He rose, sent the page boy running, and had proper provisions of every kind brought at once by carriage. Someone having come for him, he said he would come again, and left. After that he came constantly himself. Whatever he ate afterwards, he would recall that what he had had at Gojō was rare and fine. Years later, having lost the lord he served, and not wishing to see a changed world, he took orders. Sending his surplice to be washed by the woman he had known, he wrote "Shimoyuki no furuya no naka ni hitorine no utsubushizome no asa no kesa nari". That is the whole of the section.
Yoshimine no Munesada is the later Archbishop Henjō, who appears in the hundred and sixty-eighth section. The lord he served is Emperor Ninmyō, whose death and his taking of orders are told there. Gojō is the fifth avenue of the capital, and the house was roofed with cypress bark.
The setting is after his taking of orders. Years had passed; he had lost the lord he served, and, not wishing to see a changed world, had become a priest.
What prompted the poem was his sending his surplice to be washed by the woman he had known. It went with the garment.
The section closes with it. The woman who once served him young greens in the ruined house at Gojō receives, years later, a priest's robe; and with this one poem the hundred and seventy-third section ends the book.

The verb for the frost and snow falling is also the verb for growing old, so that the weather and the old house are tied in one word.
The old house recalls the leaking ruin at Gojō.
The dye named is the dark colour of a priest's habit, and its name carries the sound of lying face down.
In the closing, one word means both hemp and morning, and another both a surplice and this morning, so that a hempen robe and the morning after a night together are heard at once. Puns are laid one on another to state the condition of a priest who sleeps alone, and the situation itself — sending laundry to a woman he once spent a night with — is folded whole into the verse.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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