Yamatoyomu onononibikio tazunureba iwainotsueno otonizoarikeru

English Translation

Setting hills ringing
the echo of axes falls —
and when I sought it
it was the sound, nothing else
of the staves of blessing there

Meaning

I sought out the sound of axes that set the hills ringing, and it proved to be the noise of the staves of blessing.

Commentary

87 While Her Majesty Was at the Office of the Empress's Household, in the Western Aisle

Snow that fell past the tenth of the twelfth month was heaped into a high mountain in the garden, and over the question of how long it would last the author insisted it would stand past the tenth of the first month while the other ladies said it would not survive the year. The rain of the twentieth did not take it, and she was so caught up in the matter that she prayed to the Kannon of Hakusan not to let it melt. The mountain passed into the new year undisturbed; when more snow fell heavily on the night of the first and she was pleased to see it piling higher, the Empress said no — leave only the original and sweep the new snow away.

Very early the next morning, going down to her room, she found the head of the guard holding out a sheet of pale blue paper tied to a pine branch, laid on the sleeve of a night robe as dark green as a citron leaf, and shivering with cold. Asked where it came from, he said from the High Priestess, and the author, struck by the splendour of it, took it and carried it to the Empress.

The High Priestess of Kamo was an unmarried imperial princess who served the shrine as the sovereign's representative. The Empress is Teishi, consort of Emperor Ichijō.

The time is the morning of the second day of the first month; the place is the Office of the Empress's Household.

The Empress was still asleep, so the author tried to raise the shutter facing the curtained dais by herself, dragging over a game board to stand on; it was heavy, and the creaking woke Her Majesty. When she said that with a letter come from the High Priestess how could she not hurry, the Empress agreed it was an early message indeed and rose. Inside were two mallets of about five inches, their heads wrapped in paper in the manner of blessing staves, prettily trimmed with spearflower, running pine and sedge — and no letter. Certain there must be something, the Empress looked closely, and found this poem written on the small paper wrapped around the head of a staff.

The Empress's manner of writing her reply was admirable. Exchanges with the High Priestess, the author notes, were always handled with particular care on both sides, and the many corrections showed how much thought went into them. The messenger was given a white figured-silk shift and a sappanwood layering, and looked handsome carrying them on his shoulder through the falling snow. Her one regret is that she never learned the Empress's reply.

The first line has the hills resounding, using a verb for sound that carries and spreads. The second gives the source: the ring of axes felling timber somewhere in the mountains. The third states a settled condition — when I sought it out — and with that the line of enquiry is laid down.

The fourth line delivers the answer. The staves of blessing are the ceremonial staves presented on the first day of the hare in the first month to drive off harm. The axes ringing in the hills were cutting the wood for them, and the poem sweeps the view in from the depths of the mountains to the ritual at hand.

In the closing line an emphatic particle binds the final auxiliary into its attributive form, and that auxiliary carries the note of sudden recognition: so this, and nothing else, was what it was. The gift itself — the mallets and staves — is written into the poem, and the poem written on the paper wrapping the gift, so that object and verse are one thing.

Of the three poems in this section, alongside "Kokoninomi mezurashitomiru yukinoyama tokorodokoroni furinikerukana" and "Urayamashi ashimohikarezu watatsuumino ikanaruhitoni monotamauramu," this alone is a formal exchange arriving from outside, and it sets a moment of new-year ceremony into the middle of a private commotion about a heap of snow.

Source

Makura no Soshi

Other