Omoiidete hitokosotowane yamazatono magakinoogini akikazewafuku

English Translation

No one remembers
and comes to call here, and yet
in this mountain place
the autumn wind comes blowing
through the reeds along my fence

Meaning

No one remembers me and comes; only the autumn wind comes blowing through the reeds along the fence of this mountain house.

Commentary

Section 22: The Father's Return to the Capital

The father who had gone down to the east managed at last to come up to the capital, and settled at a place in the Western Hills; the whole household moved there and saw him, to their great joy. On a bright moonlit night they talked the whole night through, and the author made a poem, at which her father wept hard and answered.
Set against the grief of being told that this might be their parting for good, the joy of having him safely home was without limit. Yet he said only that when he had watched it happen to others, going out into the world again after age and decline had come on had looked ridiculous, and that he would shut himself away as he was; and speaking of the world as though nothing were left in it for him, he left his daughter in unceasing low spirits.
At the house in the Western Hills, a wide field stretched away to the east, and the eastern ridgeline could be seen unbroken from Mount Hiei as far as the hill they call Inari; from the south the wind in the pines of Narabi Hill came close and forlorn to the ear; and indoors the clatter of the bird-scarers being pulled in the fields carried right up to where one sat, all of it pleasantly like the country. Bright moonlit nights were very fine, and she passed her time gazing them away, but the people she had known were far off now and sent no word. When on some occasion a messenger came to ask whether anything was the matter, she was startled, and sent another poem.

The author is known only as the daughter of Sugawara no Takasue. Her father, his term as governor of Hitachi over, came up to the capital and withdrew from the world at the house in the Western Hills. Her mother was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu and a younger half-sister of the author of the Kagerō Nikki. The Western Hills are the high ground west of the capital, Narabi Hill stands near them, and Hiei and Inari are the hills seen to the east of the city.

Autumn, during the time she lived at the house in the Western Hills after her father's return.

Her acquaintances were far off now and had stopped writing, when on some occasion a messenger came to ask whether anything was the matter. Startled by it, she sent this poem back.

The section closes with it, and from the next the author's years of court service begin.

Omoi idete runs a syllable long: remembering. In the second line the emphatic koso binds to ne, the perfective-conditional of the negative auxiliary, giving a concessive resonance—no one comes—that carries on into what follows. Yamazato no fixes the place, magaki no ogi ni is the reeds growing along the rough fence, and the close completes the contrast: no person comes, but the wind does. The frame of the poem is that tou, to call on someone, and fuku, to blow, are set side by side as two ways of arriving, and the autumn wind in the reeds has long been sung as the sound that announces a visitor. "Akioikani omoiizuramu fuyufukami arashinimadou oginokarehawa" in Section 19 also takes the reed as its subject, but that poem reached out toward a distant father, while this one reproaches people who do not come. Her father has renounced the world and shut himself away, the house is far from the village, and the days in the Western Hills with no one arriving are gathered into this single verse.

Author

Sugawara no Takasue no Musume

Source

Sarashina Nikki

Other