Yo no naka ni aru waga mi ka wa wabinureba sarani ayame mo shirarezarikeri

English Translation

Am I one who lives
in the world at all? Being
so wretched, I can
no longer tell one thing from
another — nor the sweet flag.

Meaning

Am I one who lives in the world at all? Being so wretched, I can no longer tell one thing from another — nor sweet flag from anything else.

Commentary

52 The Sweet Flag in the Fifth Month

The end of the third month came. Being very much at a loss, and to avoid a period of abstinence as well, she thought to go elsewhere for a time and moved to the house of the provincial governor. Since the trouble that had hindered her was over, she resolved to begin her long fast, and while she was gathering her things a letter came from Kaneie; she answered only that she had not so much as seen the moon. On the first of the fourth month she called the boy and said that she was beginning a long fast and that he should keep it with her, and so they began. She did not make a great business of it from the first, but simply heaped incense in an earthen vessel, set it on the armrest, leaned against it, and prayed to the Buddha. What she prayed was this: that she was a woman of no good fortune whatever; that even in past years she had never known any ease in the world and had thought it hard; and that now, having come to so wretched a pass, she asked to be allowed to die soon and to attain enlightenment. As she prayed the tears fell and fell. After some twenty days of it she had two strange dreams. The fifth month came. From the woman left at her own house came word: even if you are not there, it will be unlucky if no sweet flag is set on the roof; what shall we do? Well, she thought, what could be unlucky about it — and a poem came to her; but there was no one suitable to carry it, and the day ended with the poem still in her mind.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. The house of the provincial governor is her father Tomoyasu's, so called because he had served in one province after another. The boy is her son Fujiwara no Michitsuna. Setting sweet flag on the roof is the custom of the fifth day of the fifth month, to ward off evil.
It is the fifth month of the second year of Tenroku, and the place is her father's house, to which she had moved.
From the house she had left, word came that even in her absence it would be ill-omened not to hang the sweet flag, and what were they to do. She meant to answer that there was nothing ill-omened about it, and to send this poem with the message.
The narrative says that though she wished to send it there was no suitable messenger, and the day went by with the poem in her mind. This poem too was never delivered.

The particle in the first two lines is rhetorical in force: can she be said to be living in the world at all? — she cannot. Against the word from her own house that it would be unlucky, she answers that a woman who scarcely counts as living can have no luck to speak of. The third line gives the reason: because she is wretched. The word in the fourth means the sweet flag and also the pattern or distinction of things, that is, telling one thing from another; the poem turns on it. Asked whether the flag should be set on the roof, she answers that she can distinguish neither flag nor anything else, and so takes the question away altogether. Kaneie used the same pivot in the first book, at "Kakurenu ni ouru kazu o ba tare ka shiru ayame shirazu mo mataru naru kana"; but where his was a piece of banter, hers is the statement of a woman who has lost even the will to judge. The close is in the spontaneous form, showing a mind that cannot know however it tries.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other