Toshiwakure yowaakegatano tsukikageno sodeniutsureru hodozohakanaki

English Translation

The year at its close,
the night at its breaking, and
the light of the moon
caught in the wet of my sleeve—
how fleeting a thing it is

Meaning

The year is closing, the night is breaking, and the light of the moon lies caught in my sleeve—how fleeting all of it is.

Commentary

Section 25: Life in Court Service

On the twenty-fifth of the twelfth month the author was summoned for the Buddha-Names rite at the princess's residence, and went, thinking it would be for that night only. Some forty women sat there in white robes over deep-dyed glossed silk. Hiding behind the woman who had brought her in, she showed herself among them only faintly, and withdrew at daybreak. Snow was drifting down, and the moon of a bitterly cold dawn lay faintly on the deep-dyed silk of her sleeve, so that the sleeve looked truly like a face wet with tears. On the road home she made a poem.
Having once gone out like this, she might in time have grown used to service, lost herself in the world, and—so long as no one thought her perverse—come to be treated like anyone else; but her parents, understanding nothing of it, shut her up at home before long. Not that her circumstances turned brilliant on the instant; the outcome was as far from her groundless expectations as could be. She murmured one more poem to herself, and left it at that.
Afterwards, distracted by one thing and another, she forgot even the tales, and once her mind had turned wholly practical she came to regret the long years spent lying about to no purpose without devotions or pilgrimage. Is there a Shining Genji in this world? she thought; this is no age in which a Captain Kaoru hides a woman away at Uji; what madness, what a worthless turn of mind—and yet she could not live wholly by such practicality either. In time, drawn along by a young woman she had been obliged to send in answer to a summons for one, she began to attend from time to time. Beside those who were at ease with everything, she was neither one of the young women nor senior enough to be deferred to, and was kept at a distance like an occasional guest; but since she was not staking everything on service, she found the position easy enough.
Attending in the imperial palace, with the dawn moon very bright, she thought that Amaterasu Ōmikami, in whom she put her faith, must reside there, and on a bright moonlit night around the fourth month she went quietly to worship. The next night too the moon was bright, and as she and others sat by the opened eastern door of the Fujitsubo looking at it, the sound of the Umetsubo Consort going up to the emperor's apartments was full of quiet elegance; when the others said that had the late princess lived she would have gone up in just such a way, it moved her, and she made a poem.
In winter, on a night with no moon and no snow but the whole sky clear and cold with starlight, she talked until dawn with the women in the great lady's apartments, and at daybreak they parted and went their ways. Someone who remembered this sent a poem, and the author, feeling the same, replied. Lying before her mistress, she heard the birds on the pond crying and beating their wings all night, and murmured a poem, which a woman lying beside her heard and answered. And on a day when she and a friend passed the hours talking with the sliding door between their rooms pushed open, someone who kept calling that friend down said that if it were truly urgent she would come—and the author sent her a poem attached to a withered pampas stem.

The author is known only as the daughter of Sugawara no Takasue. She entered the service of Princess Yūshi, daughter of Emperor Go-Suzaku. The "late princess" is Yūshi's mother, already dead by this time. The Umetsubo Consort is the consort whose apartments were the Umetsubo, and the Hakase no Myōbu a lady in waiting at the hall of the sacred mirror. Of "the woman of the same mind," "the woman lying beside her" and "the friend," the text gives neither name nor station.

Dawn on the twenty-fifth of the twelfth month, on the road home after being summoned for the Buddha-Names rite.

Snow drifting, and the moon of a bitterly cold dawn lying faintly on the deep-dyed silk of her sleeve: that sight drew the poem.

It is a solitary poem, and no reply is recorded. This first period of service ended with that single night, and her parents soon had her shut up at home.

Toshi wa kure and yo wa akegata no answer each other, setting the closing of a year against the breaking of a night by putting the opposite verbs side by side. Kage in the third line is light. Sode ni utsureru is the moon caught in a sleeve wet with tears, taking up the prose remark that the sleeve looked like a weeping face. The close binds the emphatic zo to the attributive hakanaki, with hodo meaning that stretch of time, that state of things. It is a poem made on the road home from a service that lasted one night, and at an hour when both the year and the night are ending, the frailty of her own brief attendance is gathered into the single word hakanaki.

Author

Sugawara no Takasue no Musume

Source

Sarashina Nikki

Other