Arashikoso fukikizarikere miyajiyama madamomijibano chiradenokoreru

English Translation

The storm has not come
blowing across this mountain,
Mount Miyaji here,
where the maple leaves remain
still, not yet fallen away

Meaning

No storm has come blowing across Mount Miyaji, it seems—for the maple leaves are still here, not yet fallen.

Commentary

Section 7: From Tōtōmi to Mikawa

The party traveling up to the capital moved on from Suruga into Tōtōmi. The author fell gravely ill along the way, so ill that she passed over the famous Sayo no Nakayama without noticing it. A temporary shelter was built for her by the Tenchū River, and after several days there she slowly recovered. Winter had deepened, and the river wind blew up so fiercely that the cold was hard to bear. Crossing that river they came to the bridge at Hamana; where unstripped logs had been laid down on the outward journey, not a trace of the bridge remained, and they crossed by boat. The outer sea was rough and its waves high, and on the bare sandbanks of the inlet nothing grew but thick pine groves, through which the waves washed in and out like jewels of many colors, a lovely sight. Climbing from there up the wretchedly steep slope called Inohana, they reached the shore of Takashi in the province of Mikawa; the famous Yatsuhashi was a name and nothing more, with no shape of a bridge and nothing worth seeing. The night they stopped in the hills of Futamura, their shelter was built beneath a great persimmon tree, and all night long the fruit came dropping onto the roof, and the party gathered it up. Then, crossing a place called Mount Miyaji at the very end of the tenth month, they found the maples still unfallen and at their height, and the author composed this poem.

The author is known only as the daughter of Sugawara no Takasue. Her father was a fifth-generation descendant of Sugawara no Michizane and had gone down to the province as Governor of Kazusa. Her mother's elder half-sister was the author of the Kagerō Nikki. Her elder sister and her stepmother traveled with the party.

The end of the tenth month, Kannin 4 (1020), on the road crossing Mount Miyaji in the province of Mikawa.

The poem arose from the sight of maples still unfallen and at their height, though the tenth month was already ending.

This is not an exchange, and no reply is recorded. Afterward the party passed the crossing at Shikasuga on the border of Mikawa and Owari, hurried through Narumi Bay in Owari ahead of the evening tide, and by way of Mino and Ōmi entered the capital on the second day of the twelfth month. This is the last poem the author composed on the journey up to the capital.

The particle koso in the opening line is emphatic and binds to the perfective-conditional ending kere of keri in the second line, completing the kakari-musubi. Fukikizarikere means "it did not come blowing, it seems," and carries the surprise of realizing that the storm which strips other mountains has spared this one. The third line sets down the place name, Miyajiyama, and pauses there; the lower half then supplies the evidence lying before her eyes. The de of chirade is a negative conjunctive particle, "without scattering," and the closing nokoreru, the attributive form of the durative auxiliary ri, ends the poem on an unfinished note that lets the feeling linger. The upper half states a cause and the lower half a result, yet in fact she is inferring the storm's absence from the leaves she can see, so that the order of the poem reverses the order of her thought. At the center of the verse is astonishment at maples at their peak so far out of season. Where "Madoromaji koyoinaradewa itsukamimu kurotonohamano akinoyonotsuki," composed earlier on the same journey, mourned an autumn moon, here the leaves that survive into winter are sung instead, and the turning of the seasons measures the length of the road.

Author

Sugawara no Takasue no Musume

Source

Sarashina Nikki

Other