Minahitono hanayachōyato isoguhimo wagakokorooba kimizoshirikeru

English Translation

When all other folk
are busy with flowers, butterflies
even on this day
what lay within my own heart
it was you, and you, who knew

Meaning

Even on this day when everyone is caught up in flowers and butterflies, it is you who knew what was in my heart.

Commentary

239 While Her Majesty Was at the Sanjō Palace

While she was at the Sanjō Palace, palanquins of sweet flag were brought in for the fifth of the fifth month, and scented balls were presented. The younger ladies and the Mistress of the Wardrobe fastened the balls to the robes of the little Princess and the young Prince. Among the many elegant offerings arriving from every quarter, someone brought in the barley sweetmeat called aozashi; the author laid a sheet of pale blue paper on the lid of a handsome inkstone box, set the sweet on it, and presented it with the remark that it came from beyond the hedge.

The Mistress of the Wardrobe is the Empress's younger sister, who held that office. The Princess and the Prince are the Empress's children. The Sanjō Palace was her residence at the time.

The time is the Boys' Festival on the fifth of the fifth month; the place is the Sanjō Palace.

The immediate occasion is the author presenting the sweet on the lid of the inkstone box with that one phrase. It alludes to an old poem in which a horse cropping barley through a hedge gets only the barest mouthful, likened to a love beyond reach — and since aozashi is made from barley, the allusion fits the gift exactly.

The Empress tore off the edge of the paper the author had brought and wrote this poem on it, answering the thoughtfulness of a single small sweet on a day when brilliant offerings kept arriving.

The first two lines describe everyone caught up in what is bright and pretty — a stock phrase for making much of lovely things, here pointing straight at the day's procession of scented balls. In the third line the verb is one of bustling preparation and cheerful haste, and the particle attached to it adds the sense of even on such a day.

In the fourth line the object particle is reinforced so that it is her own heart, and nothing else, that is singled out. The close binds an emphatic particle to a final auxiliary in its attributive form, narrowing everything to a single person and adding the note of present recognition: it was you who knew. The weight of the poem falls entirely on that last line.

The contrast between outward brightness and inward feeling is plain enough; what is striking is that the pivot of the contrast is one plain barley sweet. The author said nothing of her own feelings — only an allusive phrase — and the Empress read the care in it and answered in verse. The poem the Empress sends in the two hundred and forty-first section, "Yamachikaki iriainokaneno koegotoni kōrukokorono kazuwashiruramu," turns on the same point: that even apart, the two of them understand each other.

Author

Empress Teishi

Source

Makura no Soshi

Other