Taenuru ka kage dani araba tou beki o katami no mizu wa mikusa inikeri

English Translation

Has it ended, then?
Were there but a reflection
I might question it;
but on the water he left
behind, weed has come to grow.

Meaning

Has it ended, then? Were there even a reflection I might put my question to it; but on the water he left behind, weed has come to grow.

Commentary

22 The House Falling into Neglect; The Water in the Hair-Washing Bowl

On a day when they were passing the time quietly, after a long exchange of trifles they both fell to speaking badly of each other, and it ended with his going off in resentment. He walked out toward the veranda, called the little boy to him, said that he would not be coming again, and left; and the moment he was gone the child crawled back in, threw himself about and wept. What shall I do, what shall I do, he kept saying, and it was hard to watch. Five or six days passed with no word. Since it had gone beyond the usual, she thought how absurd it was — she had taken it for a quarrel of no consequence, but theirs was a fragile connection, and it might well end this way — and she brooded in her loneliness. And then her eye fell on the water in the hair-washing bowl, used on the day he went, standing there still, with dust floating on the surface. That it should have come to this, she thought in her astonishment, and a poem came to her. On the very day she was thinking so, he appeared; and the matter came to nothing, as it always did.
Kaneie was the third son of Fujiwara no Morosuke, and would rise to be regent and chancellor. The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. The little boy is her son, Fujiwara no Michitsuna.
It is the third year of Kōhō, after five or six days of silence following the quarrel, and the place is the author's dwelling.
He had gone off after the quarrel and five or six days had passed without word. Brooding in her loneliness, she noticed the water in the hair-washing bowl, still standing where it had been used on the day he left, with dust floating on it, and in her astonishment this poem came to her.
The narrative says that on the very day she was thinking so he appeared, and the matter came to nothing, as it always did.

The opening begins from the suspicion that the connection has broken. The word in the second line means the image cast on water: if only the face reflected there remained. The third means that she might then put her question, and its final particle is adversative, carrying into what follows. The fourth calls the water he last used a keepsake, and an ordinary household vessel, given that word, takes on all at once the atmosphere of death. The close says that weed has grown on it, the auxiliary marking the discovery. No weed could grow in a few days, so this is how she sees the dust lying on the surface: the fouling of neglected water becomes the very image of a broken marriage. The pattern of reading a marriage in a neglected garden recurs throughout this diary, but here it is not a garden — it is one small bowl for the washing of hair. The narrowing to that single point is the strength of the poem, and it is among the best known of the first book.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other