Asamidori hanamohitotsuni kasumitsutsu oboronimiyuru harunoyonotsuki

English Translation

A pale, pale green haze
with the blossoms blurred into
it, all become one—
and, seen dimly through the mist,
the moon of a night in spring

Meaning

A pale green haze, and the blossoms blurred into it until they are one, and through it, dimly, the moon of a spring night.

Commentary

Section 26: Deciding Between Spring and Autumn

The women who attended on senior nobles and courtiers seemed to be a fixed set, so that a raw provincial who kept going home could hardly be known even to exist. On a very dark night at the beginning of the tenth month, hearing that it was the hour when the finest voices were chanting at the unceasing sutra reading, two of them came out to a door on that side and lay against it listening and talking, when someone arrived. To bolt inside and call up the women from the rooms would look ridiculous, said her companion; never mind, let it be just as it is—and so the author stayed listening beside her. He spoke in a calm, quiet manner, and did not sound at all a poor sort of man. He asked who the other woman was, and rather than the usual abrupt gallantries he began, in detail, on the sad turns of the world, with here and there a note that made it hard to withdraw sharply; and both women answered him. Delighted to find someone he had not known, he showed no sign of leaving. In a darkness where not even starlight showed, a shower came on, and the sound of it on the leaves was pleasant; a night all the lovelier for it, he said—a cloudless bright moon would have been awkward, too glaring.
Then he began on spring and autumn. Spring haze is lovely, he said, the sky mild and misted, the face of the moon not too bright but seeming to flow far off, and a lute played slowly in the fūkō mode over it is a wonderful thing to hear; but in autumn, with the moon very bright and the sky, misted though it is, so clear one could take it in one's hand, and the sound of the wind and the voices of insects gathered together, a zither struck and a flute played to the full make one wonder what spring was worth. And then again, on a winter night with the very sky frozen clear and snow lying and shining, the trembling cry of a hichiriki makes one forget spring and autumn together. And he asked which held their hearts. Her companion answered in favour of the autumn night, and rather than say the same the author replied with a poem. He recited it over and over, said that autumn had evidently been cast off, and answered with a poem of his own; whereupon the woman who favoured autumn composed one too. Greatly taken, and seeming at a loss, he said that even in China no one has ever settled the question of spring and autumn, and that hearts so decided must have reasons; and he told how, going down as imperial envoy for the Ise Priestess's coming-of-age, he found the moon bright over snow that had lain for days, and how a woman who had served since the reign of Retired Emperor En'yū, awesomely aged and full of old stories, brought out a well-tuned lute, and it seemed to him no thing of this world; and since then, he said, snowy winter nights move him, and he always goes out to look. From tonight, he added, a dark night with a shower in it will sink into him too, and he does not feel it inferior to the Priestess's snow. And so they parted.
She had thought he would never learn who she was; but in the eighth month of the following year, when the princess went to the palace and there was music all night in the courtiers' hall, the author, not knowing he was in attendance, passed the night below and pushed open the sliding door of the gallery to look out at a faint and lovely dawn moon. She heard shoes, and someone chanting a sutra; he stopped at the door and spoke, and when she answered he remembered at once and said that the night of the shower had not left him for a moment. There was no time for a long reply, and she broke off in the middle of a poem; as others came up she slipped inside, and left the palace that night. Afterwards she heard that he had sought out her companion and sent an answer, and that he had said if there should be another shower like that one he would play the lute for them as far as his memory served. Curious, she waited for a fitting occasion; none ever came.
In spring, on a quiet evening, hearing that he had come, she edged out with the woman who had been with her that night, but people came from outside and the usual women were within, and she went out and came back in again. Perhaps he had thought as she did, choosing a still evening to call; finding it noisy he seemed to be leaving. She sent one poem, and that was the end of it. His character was upright and out of the common run, and she let it go without ever asking after him.

The author is known only as the daughter of Sugawara no Takasue. The courtier who talked with them is not named in the text. The woman who favoured autumn, and the woman who was with her, were fellow attendants; neither is named. The unceasing sutra reading is a service in which the chanting continues day and night; fūkō is one of the modes of the lute; the hichiriki is a reed pipe used in court music. The Ise Priestess was an unmarried imperial princess who served at the Ise Shrine, and En'yū is Emperor En'yū.

A dark night at the beginning of the tenth month, with a shower falling and not even starlight to be seen, at a door near where the sutra was being chanted.

Having spoken at length of the beauty of spring, autumn and winter nights, he asked which held their hearts, and her companion answered in favour of autumn. Rather than merely echo her, the author answered with this poem.

He recited it over and over, said that autumn had evidently been cast off, and returned "Koyoiyori nochinoinochino moshimoaraba sawaharunoyoo katamitoomowamu." The woman who favoured autumn then composed "Hitowamina harunikokoroo yosetsumeri warenomiyamimu akinoyonotsuki," and the three make one exchange.

Asamidori is the pale green of spring haze. Hana mo hitotsu ni is the cherry blossom dissolved into that haze until the two are one. Kasumitsutsu fixes the spring scene, and oboro ni miyuru is to be seen indistinctly. The poem ends on a noun, and there the answer is placed. Asked which season is finer, she does not say that spring is better but simply holds out one spring scene, and that is the movement of the verse. She takes from his own long speech the image of a spring moon not too bright and seeming to flow far off, and makes a poem of it, so that the answer also proves how closely she had listened. Piling up words that blur an outline—pale green, blossom, haze, dim—she sets it squarely against the autumn moon he had described as clear enough to take in the hand.

Author

Sugawara no Takasue no Musume

Source

Sarashina Nikki

Other