Izukotomo tsuyunoawarewa wakarejio asajigaharano akizokanashiki

English Translation

Wherever one is
the sadness the dew brings on
cannot differ much—
and yet the autumn out there
on your field of low reeds grieves

Meaning

Wherever one is, the sadness the dew brings can hardly differ—and yet it is the autumn of that field of low reeds that grieves me.

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.

Around autumn, after leaving the house where she had been staying for another; sent to the host of the former lodging.

Leaving a house where she had been looked after, and moving elsewhere, is the occasion of the poem.

No reply is recorded. The section closes with it, and the next turns to the scene in which the author reproaches the woman who had been her stepmother over her name.

Izuko to mo is "wherever one may be." Tsuyu no aware wa is the pathos that autumn dew brings. In the third line wakaru means to become separate, to differ, ji is the auxiliary of negative conjecture, and o is a conjunctive particle of concession and feeling: surely it cannot differ, and yet. Asajigahara in the fourth line is a waste of low-growing reeds, here the grounds of the house she has left. The close binds the emphatic zo to the attributive kanashiki. The first half generalizes—everywhere is alike—and the second half breaks that generalization to fix on one place. It is a courtesy poem to a former host, yet in calling his garden a field of low reeds it takes on the note of regret for a wild and neglected scene, and the sadness left unnamed in "Takenohano soyoguyogotoni nezameshite nanitomonakini monozokanashiki" just before it is here given a location.

Author

Sugawara no Takasue no Musume

Source

Sarashina Nikki

Other