Shiranami no iro mo hitotsu ni chiru hana o omoiyaru sae omokage ni tatsu

English Translation

White waves, and the white
of the falling blossom, one
colour—and even
thinking of it from afar
brings the semblance before me.

Meaning

The white of the waves and the white of the falling blossom are one; and merely thinking of it from here brings the whole sight before me.

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 the four poems in the reply that came back from the capital without delay.

It answers "Azumaji no isoyamakaze no taema yori nami sae hana no omokage ni tatsu," and is the third of the four.

It is followed by the last poem of the four, on the cherry of the eastern road.

A scene she has not seen is received by way of the act of imagining it. The first line makes the sent poem's bare waves white, and by naming the colour it lets the overlap with blossom be seen. The second line says that the white of the surf and the white of falling cherry are one, explaining the sent poem's figure at the single point of colour. The third line supplies what the sent poem had not said, that the blossom is falling, and so adds the reading in which the breaking of waves matches the falling of flowers. The additive particle in the fourth line takes the one from the sent poem's fourth line and moves it: where the sent poem said that even the waves look like blossom, this one says that even thinking of it does. The closing line takes over the sent poem's last line whole. The sent poem saw waves that were actually there and made them flowers; the reply has nothing before it and says that imagining alone brings the sight. The one with no view answers that the imagined view presses harder.

Source

Izayoi Nikki

Other