Eda wakami yuki ma ni sakeru hatsuhana wa ikani to tou ni nioi masu kana

English Translation

Its branch being young,
this first flower that opened
in a gap of snow
takes on a deeper beauty
for your asking how it does.

Meaning

Its branch being young, this first flower that opened in a gap of the snow takes on a deeper beauty for your asking how it does.

Commentary

82 The Birth Celebration of the Eleventh Month

There had been a birth at her father Tomoyasu's house in the eleventh month, and nothing had been done about it. Judging that the fiftieth day must now have come, the author had a basket made up all in white, as custom required, tied it to a branch of plum, and sent it with a poem. Her father returned a poem with a gift of a pale crimson robe.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. Tomoyasu was her father, who had served in a succession of provincial posts. The fiftieth-day celebration is the rite at which a child, fifty days after birth, is given rice cake to taste. Gifts sent for a birth were by custom prepared all in white.
It is about the fiftieth day after the birth in the eleventh month, and the place is her father Tomoyasu's house.
It answers the author, who had sent a basket all in white tied to a branch of plum, and came with a gift of a pale crimson robe.
With this exchange the section closes. After the story of the woman eating ice and a poem spoken in tears, the account moves on into the second year of Tenen.

He receives her plum and gives it back as a first flower. The opening means that the branch is young, describing a flower on a young bough and at the same time the newborn child. The second means that it opened in a break in the snow, taking up her remark about losing her way in the snow and answering that a flower has bloomed in that very snow. The third names the first blossom, which serves as the figure for a first child, and on it the poem turns. The fourth means: at your asking how it does, referring to the arrival of her congratulations. The close is an exclamation that its beauty increases the more — the flower has grown lovelier for being asked after. One who has received a congratulation answers that the child thrives the more for it, and as an exchange the two poems balance well. There are only two poems by the author's father in this diary; the other is the one he left in the inkstone case on the day he went down to Mutsu, in the first book. That one was a lament at parting; this is a celebration of a grandchild's birth.

Author

Fujiwara no Tomoyasu

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other