Chigirikemu mukashinokyōno yukashisani amanokawanami uchiidetsurukana

English Translation

They pledged, so they say,
on this day in days long gone—
longing so to know,
like the River of Heaven
I have let my words break forth

Meaning

Longing to know that day long ago, this same day, on which they are said to have made their vow, I have let my words break out like waves on the River of Heaven.

Commentary

Section 13: The Song of Everlasting Sorrow, the Sister's Ill-Omened Words, the Fire

Hearing that somewhere there was a household that owned the Chinese poem known as the Song of Everlasting Sorrow written out in the manner of a tale, the author longed to read it, but could not bring herself to ask directly. Finding a suitable intermediary, she sent a poem on the seventh day of the seventh month to request the loan. A reply came saying that although the book was one the owner ordinarily refused to lend as ill-omened, today it would be sent.
On the thirteenth night of the same month, when the moon was flawlessly bright and the whole household had gone to sleep, the author and her sister sat out on the veranda. Gazing steadily at the sky, her sister asked what she would think if, at that very moment, she were to vanish without a trace. Seeing that the question had frightened her, the sister turned the talk to other things and laughed it off; and as they listened, a carriage with outriders clearing the way stopped before the house next door, and someone was sent to call for a woman named Ogi no Ha, but no answer came. Weary of calling, the owner of the carriage played a flute with great beauty and passed on. The two sisters exchanged poems on this, and sat gazing until the sky grew light.
In the fourth month of the following year there was a fire in the middle of the night, and the cat they had cherished as the daughter of the Dainagon burned with the house. When they had called it by that name it would mew as though it understood and come walking to them, so that their father had been saying it was a strange and moving thing and that he would report it to the Dainagon; and coming just then, the loss struck the author as bitter and sad. The house they moved to could not be compared with the old one, which had been wide and deep as a mountain: it was cramped, with no garden to speak of and no trees. When white and red plum bloomed in profusion at the house opposite and the scent came to her on the wind, the old home she had lived in came back to her without end, and she composed another poem.

The author is known only as the daughter of Sugawara no Takasue. The elder sister is the one with whom she read tales in the same house. "The daughter of the Dainagon" refers to the daughter of the Jijū no Dainagon, Fujiwara no Yukinari; the sisters gave that name to the cat which the sister's dream had identified as her rebirth. Their father is Sugawara no Takasue. The Song of Everlasting Sorrow is the long poem by Bai Juyi on the doomed love of Emperor Xuanzong and Yang Guifei.

The seventh day of the seventh month, sent from the house in the capital to the household that owned the text.

Having heard of a household that possessed the Song of Everlasting Sorrow written out as a tale, and longing to read it but unable to ask outright, she found an intermediary and sent this poem on the night of Tanabata to ask for the loan.

The owner replied with "Tachiizuru amanokawaberano yukashisani tsunewayuyushiki kotomowasurenu," agreeing to lend a book usually withheld as ill-omened.

The date comes from the close of the Song of Everlasting Sorrow itself, where the emperor and Yang Guifei are said to have vowed, on the night of the seventh day of the seventh month in the Hall of Long Life, to be birds that share a wing in heaven and branches that grow together on earth.

In the opening line kemu is the auxiliary of past conjecture: they will have made their vow. The second line, mukashi no kyō, "this day of long ago," folds together the Tanabata of the present and the night of that vow. Yukashisa ni means "out of my longing to read it." The fourth line is at once the Tanabata scene and the phrase that leads into uchiidetsuru of the close, where uchiizu means both the rising of a wave and the venturing of speech; ama no kawa, nami and uchiizu run together as associated words. The closing kana is exclamatory. A plain request to borrow a book is wrapped entirely in the date and in the matter of the poem itself, and set beside the prose remark that she could not bring herself to ask, the artifice is the diffidence.

Author

Sugawara no Takasue no Musume

Source

Sarashina Nikki

Other