Ususakosa sorenimoyoranu hanayueni ukiminohodoo miruzowabishiki

English Translation

Faint or deeply dyed
it has nothing to do with that
for a flower's sake
the wretched measure of me
is shown, and it is bitter

Meaning

Faint or deep — it has nothing to do with that; because of a flower, because of a sneeze, I am shown the wretchedness of my own standing.

Commentary

184 When I First Went into Service with Her Majesty

When she first entered the Empress's service the author was ashamed of everything, close to tears, and would come up only at night, keeping herself hidden behind a curtain of state. The Empress would bring out pictures to show her, make her put out her hand, and talk to her, and by degrees she grew used to it. One night the Empress asked her ladies whether they loved her. The author had barely said that of course she did when someone sneezed loudly. How dreadful, said the Empress — so it was a lie; very well, then — and withdrew. Unable to explain herself, the author let the night pass.

The Empress is Teishi, consort of Emperor Ichijō. The god of Tadasu is the deity of the Tadasu grove at the Kamo Mioya shrine, invoked in poetry as the god who tries the truth of things. The shikigami are spirits commanded by diviners and held to observe what people do.

The time is the morning after the sneeze, shortly after she entered service; the places are the Empress's residence and the author's own room.

The immediate occasion is the arrival that morning of "Ikanishite ikanishiramashi itsuwario soranitadasuno kaminakariseba," written on pale green tissue paper. Mortified that the Empress still doubted her, and resentful toward whoever had sneezed, she composed this reply.

With it she wrote that at least this much should be conveyed on her behalf, that the shikigami must surely be watching, and that to speak falsely would be a fearful thing. The episode closes the account of her early unease in service, and the section goes on to show her growing accustomed and coming to serve the Empress on close terms.

The first line names faintness and depth of colour, conventionally standing for shallow or deep feeling. It registers, in the language of dye, her sense that the Empress's doubt concerns the intensity of her heart. The second line dismisses that: it has nothing to do with any of it — the matter was decided somewhere quite apart from the depth of anyone's feeling.

The third line carries the poem: the word for flower is also the first element of the word for a sneeze. The talk of pale and deep dye pulls one meaning forward; the events of the previous night pull the other. What is being said, under cover of a floral association, is that it was one sneeze, and nothing to do with the depth of her heart, that settled the matter.

The fourth line speaks of the wretched measure of herself, meaning the lowliness of a person in a position to be doubted. In the close an emphatic particle binds the final adjective into its attributive form. Where the Empress had invoked a god and lifted the judgement out of human hands, this reply says nothing of gods at all; it shifts the ground away from whether or not there was a lie, and lands instead on the humiliation of having one's standing exposed by a sneeze. Not answering the question head-on is, in this poem, precisely the answer.

Author

Sei Shōnagon

Source

Makura no Soshi

Other