Asakuraya imawakumoini kikumonoo naokinomaroga nanorioyasuru

English Translation

At Asakura—
and now, above in the clouds,
your name is still heard—
must you go on calling out
that name, as at the log hall?

Meaning

Asakura—your name is heard now up among the clouds of the palace, and yet do you still call it out, as they did at the hall of unbarked logs?

Commentary

Section 17: Reproaching the Stepmother over Her Name; Idle Imaginings of the Future

The woman who had been the author's stepmother had taken as her court name the name of the province to which the father had gone down, and was still called by it after she entered service at the palace. Hearing that she went on being called so even after she had joined herself to another man, the father said he would send word that it was now unsuitable, and this poem was sent.
In those days the author passed her time on nothing but hopeless expectations—that if her father rose to some position of consequence her own standing would rise with it. People nowadays begin reading sutras and practising devotions from seventeen or eighteen; nothing of the kind occurred to her. The most she could summon up was that a man of the highest birth, in looks and bearing like the Shining Genji of the tale, would visit her even once a year; that she would be hidden away in a mountain village like the lady Ukifune, gazing at blossom and maples and moon and snow, living forlornly and waiting from time to time for a splendid letter. She sets it down as an aramashigoto, mere idle supposition.

The author is known only as the daughter of Sugawara no Takasue. Her father is Sugawara no Takasue. The woman who had been her stepmother had once served at court, went down to Kazusa with him, and later left the household; at the palace she was called by the name of the province where he had served. Since a lady in waiting took her court name from the office of a father or husband, or from a province connected with them, keeping the name of a former husband's province was open to objection. Miya here means the palace.

Around the time of the father's appointment as governor of Hitachi; sent from the house in the capital to the former stepmother in palace service.

Hearing that she went on using the name of his province as her court name even after joining herself to another man, the father said he would send word that this was now unsuitable, and that is what drew the poem.

No reply is recorded. Counting the exchange over the plum branch in Section 9 and the poems over the visit to the grave in Section 14, this is the third exchange with her.

The poem draws on a verse ascribed to Emperor Tenji in the Shinkokinshū, in which one dwelling in the hall at Asakura asks who it is that passes by calling out his name. The emperor is said to have lodged at Asakura in Chikuzen in a hall built of unbarked logs, and to have required everyone who came to announce his name; the link between that hall and the act of naming is the frame of this poem.

Asakura ya sets the older poem's opening line down unchanged, working as a preface that leads to ki no maro and nanori. In the second line kumoi, the place of clouds, means the palace, and marks the recipient as now in court service. Mono o in the third line is a conjunctive particle of concession and feeling, breaking off on "and yet." Nao ki no maro ga takes up the hall of logs and the custom attached to it. In the close ya is interrogative, bound to the attributive suru. That she still uses the name of a former husband's province, having joined herself to another man, is put entirely inside the frame of the old poem, and not one word of reproach appears. "Tanomeshio naoyamatsubeki shimogareshi umeomoharuwa wasurezarikeri," sent to the same woman in Section 9, also wrapped its complaint in a flowering tree; the author's manner with her does not change.

Source

Sarashina Nikki

Other