Inazuma no hikari dani minu yagakure wa nokiba no nae mo mono omourashi

English Translation

Here in the shadow
of the house, where not even
the lightning's flash comes,
the seedlings at the eaves too
seem to be brooding on something.

Meaning

Here in the shadow of the house, where not even the lightning's flash reaches, the seedlings at the eaves too seem to be brooding.

Commentary

45 The Rice Seedlings at the Eaves

Some while before, having nothing to do, she had had the plants tended, and gathering up a number of young rice seedlings that had come up, she had them planted along the eaves of the house. They had come on beautifully and were in ear, and she had water led to them; but seeing the colored leaves standing there checked in their growth, she was very sad, and this poem came to her.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. Rice was held to come into ear at the touch of the lightning's light, and the word for lightning was said to derive from that.
It is the end of summer in the first year of Tenroku, and the place is the author's dwelling.
Some while before, having nothing to do, she had had the plants tended, and gathering up a number of young rice seedlings that had come up, she had them planted along the eaves. They had come on beautifully and were in ear, and she had water led to them; but seeing the colored leaves standing there checked in their growth, she was very sad, and this poem came to her.
It was sent to no one and stayed within her. Afterward she goes on with her days, still brooding over a marriage long since broken off.

The word at the opening is the lightning, but rice was held to come into ear at the touch of its light, and the word was also read as the rice's husband. On that tradition rests the argument that without the light there is no ripening, and with it the further sense that without a husband there is no fruit; the poem turns on that one word. The second line means that not even the light is seen, its particle marking the least case. The third names being hidden in the shadow of the house: planted under the eaves, the rice gets neither sun nor lightning, and at the same time it is her own dwelling, unvisited and out of sight. The fourth names the seedlings at the eaves, the very plants she had set there. The close conjectures that they too are brooding, laying her own figure over theirs. The act itself — planting rice at the eaves out of idleness — is already the act of a woman who waits; and by composing on the failure of that rice to ripen, she gives the length of the interval a visible form in the growth of a plant.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other