Nioikuru tonarinokazeo minishimete arishinokibano umezokoishiki

English Translation

The scent comes to me
borne on the wind from next door
and it sinks in deep—
how I long for the plum tree
at the eaves of the old house

Meaning

The wind from the house opposite comes carrying its scent, and it sinks into me, and I long for the plum that stood at the eaves of the house we had before.

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 cramped house in the capital to which they moved after the fire, at the season when the plum is in flower.

White and red plum were blooming in profusion at the house opposite, and the scent came to her on the wind; that is what drew the poem.

It is a solitary poem, and no reply is recorded. The section closes with it, and in the next her sister dies in childbirth in this same house.

Nioikuru, "coming with its fragrance," modifies the wind of the second line, the wind blowing across from the house opposite. Mi ni shimete is to take a thing in until it soaks through, and holds together the scent settling into cloth and the feeling settling into the heart. Arishi nokiba no, "of the eaves that once were," uses shi, the attributive of the past auxiliary ki. The close binds the emphatic zo to the attributive koishiki, narrowing all the longing onto the plum. The scent present before her raises the tree of the house that is gone; the conceit of fragrance carrying memory is old, but here the house behind it will not come back. That plum at the eaves is also the tree by which her stepmother promised to return when the flowers opened, the tree from which she broke the spray she sent with "Tanomeshio naoyamatsubeki shimogareshi umeomoharuwa wasurezarikeri." Where "Fuenoneno tadaakikazeto kikoyuruni nadooginohano soyotokotaenu" earlier in the section was a contest of wit, this one has turned to counting what has been lost, and it carries the reader across into the section that records her sister's death.

Author

Sugawara no Takasue no Musume

Source

Sarashina Nikki

Other