もゝの花すき物どもをさいわうが
そのわたりまで尋ねにぞやる
そのわたりまで尋ねにぞやる
- Roma-ji
-
Momo no hana sukimono domo o saiō ga sono watari made tazune ni zo yaru
- English Translation
-
O peach blossom — we
are sending out to seek those
connoisseurs of ours
as far as the country of
the Queen Mother of the West.
- Meaning
- O peach blossom: we are sending out to seek those connoisseurs of ours as far as the country of the Queen Mother of the West.
- Commentary
-
32 The Third Day of the Third Month
The next day trouble broke out among the servants of the two households and there were all sorts of ugly scenes. People took the author's part and looked sorry for her, but she wanted nothing to do with any of it. While she was still turning it over with vexation, there was a moving of houses, and she went to a place a little apart; whereupon Kaneie came in state, every other day or so. Even so, she thought, it had been better as it was — one is told to wear brocade at home — and she wished she could go back to her old house. When the things for the festival of the third day of the third month had been made ready and there was no one there, so that it all felt flat, the women of this house wrote as follows to the men in service on the other side. It was in jest. They came at once, in a body; the things were brought out, and the day was passed over wine.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. Kaneie was the third son of Fujiwara no Morosuke and would rise to be regent and chancellor. The women of this house are gentlewomen in the author's service, and the men on the other side are attendants of Kaneie's household; the text names none of them.
It is the third day of the third month of the second year of Anna, and the place is the house to which the author had moved.
The festival things were ready and there was no one to enjoy them, so the women of the house wrote this in jest and sent it to the men on the other side.
On receiving it they came at once in a body; the things were brought out, and the day was passed over wine.
The opening names the peach hung up at the festival of the third day, giving season and occasion in a single word. The second line means lovers of elegance, and also men of amorous reputation; it refers to the attendants they mean to summon. The third names the Queen Mother of the West, the immortal whose peach bears fruit once in three thousand years. Passing from peach blossom to that figure follows the same allusion used in the first book at "Michitose o mitsubeki mi ni wa toshigoto ni suku ni mo aranu hana to shirasemu," and it is the standard move for a poem on the festival flower. The fourth line means as far as that neighborhood — the place where the peaches are, an immortal's country, and therefore an extravagant distance. The close is bound by an emphatic particle: they are sending out to seek. A plain shortage of company is dressed up as an expedition to the land of the immortals in search of peaches; as the narrative says, it was in jest, and the whole is an invitation whose pretext has been deliberately made grand.
- Source
- Kagero Nikki
- Other
-
- Counting over in my heart the days until your return, I waited. For whose sake, if not yours, would I come to see a fish-weir?
- Is it for you, who have a surplus every year, that the calendar sets down an extra month — an intercalary one?
- Since the mountain wind blows from the front, the willow threads of the spring at Tako lean away, and lean toward the rear — toward us.
- Time after time you lean our way and draw with us, and so the willow's brows unknit themselves at last — now, at this very moment.