Madahitome shiranuyamabeno matsukazemo otoshitekaeru monotokosokike

English Translation

Even the pine wind
on a hillside no one yet
has come to know well
makes a sound, so I have heard,
before it turns and goes back

Meaning

Even the pine wind on a hillside no one has yet come to know is said to make some sound before it turns and goes—and yet you went back without a word.

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.

During the stay in the Eastern Hills, Manju 2 (1025).

Word that an acquaintance had come as far as the neighbourhood of the house and then gone back is what drew the poem.

The section closes with it, and the next tells of leaving the Eastern Hills and returning to the capital.

Mada hitome, "not yet in anyone's sight," modifies the hillside of the second line: this place in the Eastern Hills, newly moved into and known to no one. The mo of matsukaze mo is emphatic—even that pine wind. Oto shite kaeru is to pass by leaving a sound behind. The close binds the emphatic koso to kike, the perfective-conditional of kiku: so I have heard. The reproach—even the pine wind leaves a sound as it goes, and you came near and went back without a word—is laid at the pine wind's door, and the single word oto is both the sound of wind and word from a person. Where "Tatakutomo tarekakuinano kurenuruni yamajiofukaku tazunetehakomu" at the head of the section turned on nobody coming at all, this one turns on someone who came and left without a sound, so that the beginning and the end of the section close around days in which callers were few.

Author

Sugawara no Takasue no Musume

Source

Sarashina Nikki

Other