Chiruhanamo matakomuharuwa momoyasemu yagatewakareshi hitozokoishiki

English Translation

The blossoms that fall
I may see once more, perhaps,
when the spring returns—
but the one I parted from,
parted for good, is my grief

Meaning

The falling blossoms I may yet see again when spring comes round. It is the one I parted from, and never saw again, whom I long for.

Commentary

Section 10: The Death of the Nurse, Absorbed in the Tale of Genji

In those days of longing to lose herself in tales, an epidemic threw the world into confusion that spring, and the nurse whose face she had seen so movingly by moonlight at the Matsusato crossing on the road up from Kazusa died on the first day of the third month. The author grieved beyond consolation, and even her wish to read tales left her. Weeping the days away, she looked out one evening and saw the cherry blossoms scattering, not one left on the branches, in the full glow of the setting sun. The poem came from that sight.
Then she heard that the daughter of the Jijū no Dainagon had died as well. She listened with deep pity to reports of how her husband, the Tono no Chūjō, was grieving, all the more because her own sorrow was fresh. Taking out the specimen of the young lady's hand that had been given her on her arrival in the capital as a model for her writing, she found written there the line "sayo fukete nezamezariseba" and, following it, the Toribeyama poem, set down in a script of indescribable beauty; and her tears only came the harder.
Afterwards, seeing her sunk in gloom, her mother sought out tales to show her, and on a visit to an aunt newly come up from the provinces the author was given the fifty and more volumes of the Tale of Genji in their chest, together with other tales besides. Lying behind her curtain of state and drawing them out one by one from the first volume, she felt that the rank of empress would be nothing beside it, and when a pure-looking monk appeared in a dream urging her to learn the fifth scroll of the Lotus Sutra at once, she paid it no mind and sank further into the world of the tales.

The author is known only as the daughter of Sugawara no Takasue. The nurse had traveled with the party from Kazusa and had parted from them at the Matsusato crossing. The Jijū no Dainagon is Fujiwara no Yukinari, who rose to Provisional Major Counselor but is called by the title he held for many years as chamberlain; his daughter married Nagaie, youngest son of Fujiwara no Michinaga. The Tono no Chūjō is that Nagaie, tono referring to Michinaga himself.

Just after the first day of the third month, Jian 1 (1021), at the house in the capital, at dusk while the cherry blossoms were falling.

Weeping the days away in grief for her nurse, the author looked out and saw the cherry scattering wholly away in the light of the setting sun. That sight is what drew the poem from her.

It is a solitary poem, and no reply is recorded. Immediately afterwards she learned of the death of the daughter of the Jijū no Dainagon and, seeing "Toribeyama taninikemurino moetataba hakanakumieshi waretoshiranamu" in the young lady's own hand, sank deeper still into sorrow. Her mother's concern for a daughter who had lost all interest in tales leads directly to the scene in which she receives the fifty and more volumes of the Tale of Genji.

The particle mo in the opening line sets up a comparison: even these blossoms falling before her eyes. In the second line mu is the auxiliary of conjecture, of a spring that is bound to come round again. Mi mo ya semu inserts the particles mo and ya into the verb miru, and ya … mu frames a question, allowing the faint hope that she may see them once more. Everything to this point concerns the cherry; from the fourth line the poem turns to the nurse. Yagate means "just so, and no more": they parted on the road at the Matsusato crossing, and that parting turned out to be final. The close binds the emphatic particle zo to the attributive koishiki, ending firmly on the contrast between blossoms that return and a person who cannot. Laying human death over falling blossom is an old pattern, but here the temporal phrases mata komu haru and yagate wakareshi face each other directly, and the memory of the journey itself becomes the root of the grief.

Author

Sugawara no Takasue no Musume

Source

Sarashina Nikki

Other