Chigiriokishi hananosakario tsugenukana haruyamadakonu hanayaniowanu

English Translation

You promised to tell
and yet no word of the bloom
has come from you there—
has the spring not reached you yet?
have the flowers not opened?

Meaning

You do not send the word you promised, when the blossom should be at its height. Has spring not yet reached you? Have the flowers not opened?

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.

Past the tenth of the third month of the following year, sent from the house in the capital to the nun in the Eastern Hills.

She had said that if she lived until spring she would certainly come, and had asked for word as soon as the blossom was at its height; the year turned and nothing came. Tired of waiting, she sent this.

No reply is recorded. The Eastern Hills drop out of the diary from here, and the author begins setting down days spent staying in other people's houses.

Chigiri okishi is a promise made in advance, with shi the attributive of the past auxiliary ki. The second line names what was promised. In the third, nu is the attributive of the negative auxiliary and kana is exclamatory, giving a light reproach: you send no word. The fourth and fifth lines repeat one construction, with ya interrogative in both and the attributives konu and niowanu completing them. Rather than blame the nun for neglect, the poem looks outside her for a reason—perhaps spring has not come, perhaps the flowers have not opened—and the reproach is softened by it. The combination of a promise, a flowering tree and a waiting heart is exactly that of "Tanomeshio naoyamatsubeki shimogareshi umeomoharuwa wasurezarikeri," sent in Section 9 to a stepmother who had promised to come when the plum bloomed and did not, and the author returns to the pattern here.

Author

Sugawara no Takasue no Musume

Source

Sarashina Nikki

Other