Ume no hana taga sode fureshi nioi zo to haru ya mukashi no tsuki ni towabaya

English Translation

Whose sleeve was it brushed
the plum flower, leaving this scent
I would like to ask
of the moon, and of whether
the spring is the old spring still

Meaning

Whose sleeve brushed the plum and left this scent? I would put the question to that moon, the one that was asked whether the spring was the old spring.

Commentary

Book One Spring Poems I 46

Headnote: for the contest in fifteen hundred rounds.
The third of the poems joining plum scent to the moon. It alludes to two famous older poems at once and asks the moon to say whose the fragrance is. The headnote assigns it to the poetry contest in fifteen hundred rounds.
The poet, given by his court title, is Minamoto no Michitomo (1171-1227), a son of the Inner Minister Minamoto no Michichika and one of the compilers of the Shin Kokin Wakashu. Minamoto no Michiteru of the twenty-fifth poem was his younger brother.
The time is a night in the plum season; no place is given.
The occasion was submission to the contest, for which Go-Toba had thirty poets each compose a hundred poems, matched round by round.
There are two models: the Kokin Wakashu poem asking whose sleeve had brushed the plum at that house, and Ariwara no Narihira's poem asking whether the moon is not the moon and the spring not the old spring, while he alone remains himself.

The first three lines take the first model almost unchanged. The forty-third poem draws on the same older piece, and the two run in parallel.
The fourth line lifts a phrase out of the second model. In Narihira's poem it laments that the spring is not what it was; here it is recast to modify the moon, so that the sense becomes: that moon, the one over which the lament was made.
The final particle expresses a wish: I should like to ask.
Two older poems are laid over one, and the question of whose scent this is joins with the question of whether time has changed everything. Asking after the owner of a fragrance widens into asking whether now is the same as then.
In the forty-fifth poem the moon was asked and gave no answer; here the asking has not yet happened. The two may be read as one question to one listener, set at two different moments.

Author

Minamoto no Michitomo

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other