Nawashirono mizukagebakari mieshitano karihatsurumade nagainishikeri

English Translation

The seedbeds, in which
nothing showed but the water
when I saw them last—
they have been reaped and cleared now:
how long a stay I have made

Meaning

Those fields where nothing showed but the shine of water on the seedbeds have been reaped clean—so long a stay I have made of it.

Commentary

Section 16: Back to the Capital from the Eastern Hills

In the eighth month, when the moon of past the twentieth stood beautiful toward dawn, with the hills dark on one side and the sound of the waterfall like nothing else, the author gazed and gazed at it and made a poem.
Setting out at last from the Eastern Hills for the capital, she found that the fields which had shown nothing but water when she came had all been reaped, and the change drew another poem.
Toward the end of the tenth month she came back for a brief look. The leaves that had grown thick and dark had scattered without one left, the whole prospect opened out and full of feeling, and the stream that had run so pleasantly was buried under leaves with only its channel showing. She made a poem on that.
She had told a nun living there that if she lived until spring she would certainly come again, and asked to be sent word as soon as the blossom was at its height; but the year turned and no message came, and by past the tenth of the third month she sent a poem to prompt her.
Having moved to another household, near the time of the moon, in a room close by the bamboo, she was woken again and again by the sound of the wind and could not settle to sleep, and composed another poem.
Around autumn she left that house for another, and sent a poem to the host of the place where she had been staying.

The author is known only as the daughter of Sugawara no Takasue. Of the nun in the Eastern Hills and of the host of the lodging, the text gives neither name nor station. A tabi naru tokoro is a stay at a house other than one's own, as when avoiding an unlucky direction.

Autumn of Manju 2 (1025), on the road back from the Eastern Hills to the capital.

The fields that had held nothing but water in their seedbeds when she went up at the end of the fourth month had all been reaped by the time she came down again. Seeing that change is what drew the poem.

It is a solitary poem, and no reply is recorded. After the return to the capital she goes back to the Eastern Hills at the end of the tenth month and composes "Mizusaezo sumitaenikeru konohachiru arashinoyamano kokorobososani."

Nawashiro no is the bed where rice seedlings are raised. In the second line kage is light, or what is reflected: nothing but the shine of water. Mieshi ta no uses shi, the attributive of the past auxiliary ki, to point back to the fields as they then appeared. Karihatsuru made is until the reaping is entirely done, with hatsu marking the completion. The close ends on keri, the note of sudden recognition: what a long stay it has been. The length of the stay is measured neither in months nor in feeling but only by the change in the fields, and the poem faces exactly the line of prose that recorded seeing those seedbeds on the way up.

Author

Sugawara no Takasue no Musume

Source

Sarashina Nikki

Other