Akatsukio naninimachikemu omoukoto narutomokikanu kanenootoyue

English Translation

Why did we wait so
for the dawn, and to what end,
when the bell that rings
will never ring out to say
that the thing we hoped for came

Meaning

Why did we wait for the dawn at all—because of a bell that rings but never tells us whether what we hoped for has come to pass?

Commentary

Section 15: The Father Passed Over at the Appointments; the Beauty of the Eastern Hills

At the appointments in the first month of the new year the author's father should have received a post, but the hope came to nothing. On that fruitless morning a poem arrived from someone who must have felt the same, with a note about the restlessness of lying awake for daybreak, telling himself that surely this time it would come; and the author replied.
Toward the end of the fourth month, for reasons that had to be met, the household moved to a place in the Eastern Hills. Along the road the seedbeds with water let into them and the fields already planted stretched away, greening faintly and pleasant to look at. In the evening, with the shadow of the hills falling dark and close before the house, forlorn and full of feeling, a water rail called and called, and she made a poem.
Ryōzen being close by, she went to worship there; finding it hard going, she stopped at a stone-ringed spring at the mountain temple and drank from her cupped hands. Someone said one could never drink enough of that water, and the author made a poem, to which he replied. On their return, with the evening sun striking clear and the whole of the capital visible in the distance, this man, saying he must go back to the city, felt the parting keenly, and sent another poem the next morning.
When the sound of a monk at his dawn devotions came to her, solemn to hear, she pushed open the door: the ridgeline was paling into light, mist lay over the dark treetops, and the sky closed in by all that foliage, cloudy and lovely, pleased her more than blossom or maples at their height. A cuckoo, too, called over and over from a bough close at hand, and she made a poem of that daybreak and that voice.
Near the end of the month a cuckoo cried noisily from a tree down toward the valley, and she composed again. As she sat gazing, the woman who was with her said: is there anyone in the city hearing this voice now, anyone who spares a thought for us sunk in reverie here? and made a poem, which the author answered.
Near what she took for daybreak, a sound came from the hills as of many people approaching. Startled, she looked out and saw a deer that had come as far as the veranda and was belling there—a voice with no charm in it heard from close by. She made a poem on that, and another on hearing that an acquaintance had come near the house and turned back.

The author is known only as the daughter of Sugawara no Takasue. Her father is Sugawara no Takasue, who hoped for a post at these appointments and was passed over. Of "the person of the same mind," "the man who drank the water," and "the woman who was with her," the text gives neither name nor station. Ryōzen is one of the peaks of the Eastern Hills, where a mountain temple stood.

The morning after the appointments were announced, in the first month of Manju 2 (1025); the reply sent from the house in the capital.

It answers the sender of "Akurumatsu kanenokoenimo yumesamete akinomomoyono kokochiseshikana."

With this exchange the matter of the appointments is closed, and at the end of the fourth month the household moves to the Eastern Hills.

Akatsuki o, "the dawn," takes o as the object particle. In the second line nani ni asks to what purpose, and kemu is the auxiliary of past conjecture: why can we have been waiting? Omou koto is the thing hoped for, the appointment. In the fourth line naru is a pivot, at once the wish coming to pass and the bell ringing, which is why kane no oto stands in the close as an associated word; the nu of kikanu is the attributive of the negative auxiliary. The final yue marks cause, and the poem breaks off on a noun. The bell the other had put in his poem is taken up and turned into the pivot of the reply, which is the mark of a well-made answer. To say that a bell cannot tell you whether your wish was granted is to look at the two of them, waiting all night, from a little distance.

Author

Sugawara no Takasue no Musume

Source

Sarashina Nikki

Other