Kimi o koso asahi to tanome furusato ni nokoru nadeshiko shimo ni karasu na

English Translation

On you, and you alone,
I lean, as on the morning sun—
in the old home there
the pinks that are left behind,
let no frost wither them, please.

Meaning

It is you I look to as the morning sun; do not let the frost wither the pinks that remain behind in the old capital.

Commentary

Section 3 The Parting Exchange of Poems

After the death of her husband Fujiwara no Tameie, Abutsu-ni fell into dispute with Tameie's heir Tameuji over the inheritance of the Hosokawa estate in Harima Province, and when her suit in the capital came to nothing she resolved to appeal directly to the shogunal court in Kamakura. As she made ready to leave, the garden and the brushwood fence, already grown wild even while she had kept them under her eye, seemed certain to grow wilder still in her absence, and the tears on the sleeves of those who clung to her could not be consoled. The Jiju and the Taifu in particular sank into such dejection that it pained her, and after talking them round she looked into the sleeping chamber and found the old pillow of the departed lying just as it had always lain. From there the parting exchanges follow one upon another: the poem written beside the pillow; the poem sent with the notebooks of verse handed down in the house, sealed with a colophon and dispatched to the Jiju; the Jiju's reply; the poem the Taifu set down in his writing practice and the answer added on the same sheet; the poem of the Risshi, the elder brother who came down from the mountain to see her off; the poem of the Ajari no Kimi, who was to travel with her as guide; and the poem sent to her only daughter, in service at the women's palace, together with her reply. Abutsu-ni records that she has written out the poems of her five children without leaving any out, admitting that to a parent's heart every one of them seemed moving, and then, telling herself that such weakness will not do, she casts it all off and sets out.

Abutsu-ni was a consort of Fujiwara no Tameie and the mother of Tamesuke and Tamemori. Tameie was a poet of the Mikohidari house and a son of Fujiwara no Teika. The Jiju is her son Reizei Tamesuke, founder of the Reizei house, seventeen by the old count at this time; the Taifu is his younger brother Tamemori, then fifteen. The Risshi is a son in holy orders, called in the text the Jiju's elder brother, whom the interlinear note names Gensho. The Ajari no Kimi is a mountain ascetic, described in the text as elder than these, whom the note names Keiyu. There was only one daughter, in service at what the text calls the women's palace close by, which the note identifies as Shin'yomeimon'in. Abutsu-ni gathers all five together under the phrase 'her five children'.

The tenth month of Koan 2 (1279); from her house in the capital before departure she sends a letter to her daughter, in service at the women's palace nearby.

There was only this one daughter. A princess had just been born to the palace she served, and she was a steady, careful person, grown-up in her ways. Writing to say how she would miss the household there, Abutsu-ni set down in detail her wish that the Jiju and the Taifu should be looked after, and added this poem at the end.

The reply came back full and deeply felt, and the answering poem read: "Omoioku kokoro todome wa furusato no shimo ni mo kareji yamato nadeshiko."

The poem entrusts the young children being left behind to the care of their elder sister. The emphatic particle in the first line binds to the verb in the second and narrows the trust to this one person. The morning sun of the second line is what melts frost, and it works in pair with the frost of the closing line. The third line names the capital as the place left behind by one setting out. In the fourth line the word for pinks puns on a phrase meaning the child one has caressed, and stands for the Jiju and the Taifu who remain. The prohibitive particle closes the poem, and within the single unbroken image of flowers that will wither in frost unless the morning sun protects them, the request for guardianship lies folded. What the letter had said plainly is here said over again in figure alone, so that prose and poem are laid one upon the other.

Author

Abutsu-ni

Source

Izayoi Nikki

Other