Toshi goto ni amareru kimi ga tame urūzuki o ba oku ni ya aruramu

English Translation

Is it for you, who
have a surplus every year,
that the calendar
sets down an extra month —
an intercalary one?

Meaning

Is it for you, who run to a surplus every year, that an extra month is set into the calendar?

Commentary

30 The New Year's Wish: Thirty Days and Thirty Nights

So, fleetingly, the morning of another new year came round. Thinking that this house had always been strangely lax about the observances that other people keep, and that perhaps that was the reason for everything, she said as she came shuffling out: now then, all of you, let us this year at least keep the observances properly and see what the world does. Hearing this, a person who seemed to be her brother, still lying down, recited the old line about sewing heaven and earth into a bag. The author was much taken with it and said: then let us go further and say, thirty days and thirty nights at my house. The women before her laughed and said that it was exactly what one could wish, and that since she had said it she might as well write it out and send it to His Lordship. The one who had been lying down got up too and said it was a capital idea and would outdo the four quarters of the realm; and so, amid the laughter, she wrote it down and sent it by the little boy Michitsuna. Kaneie was much in favor at the time, and a great many people had come to wait on him; there was a great bustle about getting him off to the palace early, and yet a reply came. It must be because this year had two fifth months. The author thought she had spoiled her own good wishes.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. Kaneie was the third son of Fujiwara no Morosuke and was then much in favor; he would rise to be regent and chancellor. The messenger was her son, Fujiwara no Michitsuna. The person who seemed to be her brother is named in the text by that word alone.
It is the morning of the first day of the first month of the second year of Anna, and the places are the author's dwelling and Kaneie's residence.
It answers the line the author had written down in jest — thirty days and thirty nights at my house — and sent by the young Michitsuna.
The narrative says that on reading it she felt she had spoiled her own good wishes: what was meant as a New Year's felicitation had ended by making her own excess of demand the joke.

The opening means year by year, pointing to a demand repeated every year. The word in the second line means to run over, to be left in excess: thirty days and thirty nights claimed month after month cannot but leave a surplus. What follows conjectures that an extra month is set down in the calendar, taking as its material the plain fact that this year carried a second fifth month. The argument is that an intercalary month exists in the reckoning because her demands run to a surplus every year — neither an acceptance nor a refusal, but a joke made at the expense of the calendar itself. The force of the poem lies in converting thirty days and thirty nights into a question of arithmetic, and that is exactly why the author felt her felicitation spoiled: her good wishes had been turned into a sum. The base text is disturbed here, and the division of the lines is not settled.

Author

Fujiwara no Kaneie

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other