Nabiku kana omowanu kata ni kuretake no ukiyo no sue wa kaku koso arikere

English Translation

How it leans — and toward
a quarter I never looked for.
The bamboo's joints, its
far end: so this is what the
end of a hard world comes to.

Meaning

How it leans, and toward a quarter I never looked for. So this, then, is what the far end of a hard world comes to.

Commentary

50 Planting the Bamboo

She resolved to go straight on into a long fast, shut herself up in a mountain temple, and, if that should prove endurable, to turn somehow after all to the way of renunciation, which people say one falls away from so easily. But those about her said that a fast begun about autumn was thought a very fine thing, and there were matters she could not well avoid. Since that was so, she thought she had better let this season pass, and waited for the next month. In any case she found everything of this world tiresome; but as for the bamboo she had asked for in the spring of the previous year, word came that it would be sent now, and she said: in a world I have given up expecting anything of, am I to go planting things as though I had no sense? To which they wrote back that this was a very narrow way of thinking, and that the Bodhisattva Gyōki planted his trees for the sake of those who should come after. So, thinking with feeling of the place where the bamboo had stood, and that whoever should see it might see it, she wept and had it planted. Two days later heavy rain fell and a violent east wind blew, and one stalk and then another leaned over; and while she was wishing they might be set upright and that the rain would give over, a poem came to her.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. Bamboo of this kind was planted in gardens to be admired. The Bodhisattva Gyōki was a monk of the Nara period, said to have planted trees and built bridges throughout the provinces.
It is about the third month of the second year of Tenroku, and the place is the author's dwelling.
Word came that the bamboo she had asked for the spring before would be sent; when she demurred, saying she hardly cared to leave so pointless a piece of work in a world she did not expect to see out, the answer cited the Bodhisattva Gyōki, who planted for those who would come after, and so she wept and had it planted. Two days later heavy rain and a violent east wind bent one or two stems over, and this poem came to her at the sight.
The rain went on through the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth, and "Furu ame no ashi to mo otsuru namida kana komaka ni mono o omoikudakeba" was composed.

The opening is an exclamation, bringing out first the surprise of seeing the bamboo bent by the wind. The second means toward a quarter never expected, pointing at once to the newly planted stalks going over against her wishes and to a life that will not go as she would have it. The third names the bamboo again, and by the word for its joints introduces the word in the line that follows. In the fourth, one word means the joint of a bamboo and also the world, and another means the tip of the stalk and also the latter end of an age; the two together turn the shape of the plant into the shape of the world. The close is bound by an emphatic particle and states the discovery: so this is how it is. Remembering that she had been told trees are planted for the sake of those who come after, and had wept as she planted, and that in two days the stalks were down, one may read the poem as the record of a heart that tried to look forward and was bent at once.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other