Ranshōkaji kinchōka kusanoiorio tarekatazunen

English Translation

In the Orchid Court
when the flowers are at their height
beneath brocade drapes —
and this hut of woven grass
who is there would seek it out

Meaning

In the Orchid Ministry, in the season of flowers, beneath the brocade curtains you sit — and this hut of grass, who is there to come seeking it?

Commentary

82 The Head Chamberlain Hears an Idle Rumour

The Head Chamberlain and Middle Captain, having picked up some trifling gossip about the author, runs her down at length in the courtiers' hall, wondering aloud why he ever thought well of her. She laughs it off, reasoning that since the story is untrue the misunderstanding will clear of itself; but when he passes the Black Door he covers his face with his sleeve and will not glance her way. Late in the second month, on a day of heavy rain and idleness, he sends a messenger from the seclusion of a ritual retreat. That night, going up to the Empress's rooms, the author finds the ladies gathered below the threshold beside the lamp, playing at matching the parts of characters. A palace attendant appears, insisting on delivering something into her hands and demanding a quick reply. On the pale blue paper, elegantly written, stands a single line of Chinese verse from the collected works of Bai Juyi.

The Head Chamberlain is Fujiwara no Tadanobu, son of the Chancellor Tamemitsu, who later rose through the Council of State to Major Counsellor and was reckoned one of the four great counsellors for his learning. The Middle Captain of the Minamoto is Minamoto no Nobukata, and the Assistant Master of Repairs is Tachibana no Norimitsu, whom the court habitually spoke of as the author's brother.

The setting is the palace, on a night of pouring rain at the end of the second month.

The immediate occasion is Tadanobu writing out that one line and pressing her, again and again, for what should follow. Had the Empress been present she could have shown it to her; but to write out uncertain Chinese characters as though she knew the rest would look worse still, and with the messenger hurrying her and no time to consider, she wrote in the margin of his own letter, using a spent coal from the brazier.

No answer came back that night. The next morning the Middle Captain of the Minamoto came to her room and told her what had happened: the men gathered in Tadanobu's night quarters had agreed that though he claimed to be done with her he could not let it rest, and resolved to settle the matter one way or the other; when her lines came back they crowded round in an uproar, tried to cap them with an opening verse, and were still at it late into the night without success. From then on she was known by the nickname of the grass hut. Norimitsu came with the same account, and the Empress told her that the courtiers were all carrying the lines written on their fans, which astonished her. After that Tadanobu stopped hiding behind his sleeve, and the misunderstanding was over.

The opening is a line from Bai Juyi, placing the recipient in the brilliance of the court. What the author wrote was not the matching Chinese line but its sense opened out into Japanese. The hut of grass stands directly against the brocade curtains: a poor dwelling, and a word that sets the speaker on the low side of every comparison.

The interrogative in the closing line is bound by an emphatic particle that draws the verb into its attributive form, producing a rhetorical question — who would come seeking? no one would — so that the splendour of the Chinese line is answered by a hut no one visits. To reply to a Chinese couplet in Chinese would be a display of learning; to get a character wrong would be a humiliation. Avoiding both by answering in Japanese script is the point of the whole episode.

The spent coal is not a small detail either. At a lamp-lit game, with no fresh paper or ink, writing in the margin of the letter with a dead ember conveys exactly the pressure of a moment that allowed no time to think.

Author

Bai Juyi (opening lines), Sei Shōnagon (closing lines)

Source

Makura no Soshi

Other