Miyakobito omoi mo ideba Azumaji no hana ya ikani to otozurete mashi

English Translation

If the city folk
so much as remembered me,
surely they would send
to ask how it is with them,
the blossoms of the east road.

Meaning

If the people of the capital so much as remembered me, they would surely write to ask how the blossom is here on the eastern road.

Commentary

Section 17 The Exchange with Tameko

The Gon-Chunagon is a woman who gives herself to poetry without distraction, and so Abutsu-ni gathers together the poems she has lately been writing as practice and sends them to her. Since she lives near the sea, she adds that even when she picks up shells there, this is not the shore of Nagusa and she is not consoled after all; and she sends five poems. She had written them just as the brush ran, as she pleased, and the messenger being in haste they were left looking half-finished; and the reply came back with no delay at all. In it the lady writes that the uncertainty of these days has cleared away, like haze, with this letter, and four poems come with it. The four sent from the capital answer the first, third, fourth and fifth of the poems Abutsu-ni had sent.

Abutsu-ni was a consort of Fujiwara no Tameie and the mother of Tamesuke and Tamemori, living at Tsukikage-no-yatsu in Kamakura. The Gon-Chunagon is the daughter of Tamenori, the former Captain of the Right Watch, and serves in the household of Omiya-in. Tamenori was a son of Tameie and a younger brother of Tameuji, and the elder half-brother of Tamesuke, so that the Gon-Chunagon is a granddaughter of Abutsu-ni's late husband. She had already written at the start of winter with "Harubaru to omoi koso yare tabigoromo namida shigururu hodo ya ikani to," and this exchange continues that correspondence. The prose calls her a woman who gives herself to poetry without distraction, and this is the section in which the most poems pass between them anywhere in the Kamakura chapters.

Spring of Koan 3 (1280); one of five practice poems sent from Tsukikage-no-yatsu in Kamakura to the capital.

It is the last of the five practice poems.

The reply is "Azumaji no sakura o mite mo wasurezuba miyako no hana o hito ya towamashi," which turns this poem's own manner back on it.

The five poems, until now a series of scenes, close with an address to the reader of them. The first line names the people of the capital, and it includes the recipient herself. The particle in the second line sets the smallest possible condition, if they so much as remembered, and the clause is conditional. The third line repeats the opening of "Azumaji no isoyamakaze no taema yori nami sae hana no omokage ni tatsu" and binds the two poems together. In the fourth line an interrogative particle and a quotative give the content of the letter that is not being written. The closing auxiliary is counterfactual, so that beneath it lies the reproach: they would, if they remembered, and no letter comes. After four poems that only report what is there, this one alone tries to move the person reading, and it makes the five read as a single letter.

Author

Abutsu-ni

Source

Izayoi Nikki

Other