Michitose o mitsubeki mi ni wa toshigoto ni suku ni mo aranu hana to shirasemu

English Translation

To one whose life will
look upon three thousand years,
I would make it known:
this is no flower that passes
away with every season.

Meaning

To one destined to see three thousand years, let me make it known that this is not a flower which passes away each year.

Commentary

8 The Peach Festival and the Parting from Her Sister

The year turned and the third month came. Peach blossoms and the rest had no doubt been made ready, but though she waited, Kaneie did not appear; and the other lady, who was usually never away from her side, did not come that day either. On the morning of the fourth they all appeared together, and saying that the things she had waited over since the night before were better used than left, they brought out this and that. When the flowers she had prepared with such care were broken off and set out from within, there was written on them, in the hand of one who could not keep her composure, a poem jotted down as if in idle practice. Kaneie, seeing her try to hide it, snatched it up and made his reply. The other lady, hearing this, put into a poem of her own the reason she had stayed away. From this time Kaneie made no secret of his visits to the woman of Machi no Kōji, going openly and on purpose. Once there had been at least some care not to rouse the author's suspicions; now there was nothing to be done, and it was wretched. Moreover, while she was still watching the other lady come and go, they said it was time she moved somewhere easier, and took her away. The author, left behind, felt lonelier still, and the thought that she would hardly see her face again made her truly sad, so that as the carriage was drawn up she sent her a poem. It was the man who answered.
Kaneie was the third son of Fujiwara no Morosuke and at this time Assistant Commander of the Right Guards; he would rise to be regent and chancellor. The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. The other lady is a sister of the author, whom the text names by that designation alone. The woman of Machi no Kōji likewise appears under that name only, her family never disclosed.
It is the morning of the fourth day of the third month of the tenth year of Tenryaku, and the place is the author's dwelling.
Seeing her try to hide the poem she had written in idle practice, Kaneie snatched it up and composed this in answer.
After this exchange the narrative records that the affair of the woman of Machi no Kōji had now come openly into view. "Hana ni yori suku chō koto no yuyushiki ni yoso nagara nite kurashiteshi nari" follows, and in time the account moves to the parting from her sister.

The opening names three thousand years, drawing on the tradition that the peach bears fruit but once in that span; since the poem takes the festival's flower as its material, the word is exactly in place. The second line means to one whose life will see them out, the language of felicitation for long life, though here it works to check her impatience. The third means year by year. The verb in the fourth line means to pass away, taking up her own phrase about a yesterday already gone; some read into it a second sense of being fond of a thing. The close says that he would have her know it is such a flower as that — which is to say that a single day's delay is nothing to grieve over. He does not meet her reproach directly but shifts it into an auspicious allusion, keeping to the pattern by which an answering poem gathers up the other's words and turns their sense.

Author

Fujiwara no Kaneie

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other