Harusame ni nuretaru hana no eda yori mo hito shirenu mi no sode zo warinaki

English Translation

More than the branch of
blossom that the spring rain has
wetted, the sleeve of
one whom no one knows about
is wet past all reason now.

Meaning

More than the branch of blossom wetted by the spring rain, the sleeve of one whom nobody knows about is wet past all reason.

Commentary

87 The Beginning of the Master of the Right Stables' Suit

The Master of the Right Stables wrote to the author through Michitsuna, asking to take her adopted daughter to wife. This is the poem contained in that letter.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. The Master of the Right Stables was a younger brother of Kaneie; the text gives only his office and no name, and a marginal note in the base text identifies him as Fujiwara no Tōdo. The adopted daughter is the girl taken in the year before, a child of Kaneie's. Michitsuna was the author's son, twenty that year.
It is spring in the second year of Tenen, and the places are the author's dwelling and the Master's residence.
The Master of the Right Stables wrote to the author through Michitsuna, asking to take her adopted daughter to wife; this is the poem contained in that letter.
Afterward come Kaneie's unexpected words, the Master's sudden visit and their first meeting face to face, and then the exchange in the fourth month in which he presses his suit.

The opening fixes the season and passes to the branch of blossom wet with rain, a scene usually admired for its softness; here it serves only as one term of a comparison, the weight of the poem lying in the second half. The third line sets up that comparison. The fourth means one whom nobody knows of, describing a man who has not been able to declare himself. The word at the close means past reason, not to be helped, and the emphatic particle strengthens it. Since a sleeve is wet with tears, the rain-wet branch and the tear-wet sleeve are set side by side on the single point of wetness. As the poem enclosed in a first letter of courtship it is conventional enough, pleading the depth of his feeling; and by naming something beautiful and then claiming that his own sleeve is wetter, it keeps the exaggeration modest. Set beside Kaneie's first poem to the author in the first book, which announced his suit outright and without any intermediary, this one raises a scene before it speaks of the speaker, and so proceeds by more measured steps.

Source

Kagero Nikki

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