同しえになきつゝをりし郭公
聲はかはらぬものとしらなん
聲はかはらぬものとしらなん
- Roma-ji
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Onaji e ni nakitsutsu orishi hototogisu koe wa kawaranu mono to shiranan
- English Translation
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On the very same branch
we two cuckoos sang together,
perched there side by side;
know then that this voice of mine
is no different from his
- Meaning
- We were cuckoos singing together on the very same branch. Know, then, that my voice is no different from his.
- Commentary
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1 The Mandarin Orange Blossom
Past the tenth day of the fourth month of Chōhō 5 (1003), Izumi Shikibu was passing her days grieving over a love more fleeting than a dream. As the shade beneath the trees deepened, she sat gazing with quiet feeling at the green grass atop the earthen wall, which no one else bothered to notice, when she sensed someone near the lattice fence. It was the page boy who had served the late prince. When she asked why he had stayed away so long, he explained that he had been visiting mountain temples, but feeling forlorn he had begun serving the Prince of the Dazaifu in place of his late master. The prince had asked him kindly whether he still called on her and, handing him a sprig of mandarin orange blossom, said, "Give her this, and see what she makes of it." Without thinking, she murmured, "of the one I knew long ago."
The woman is Izumi Shikibu, daughter of Ōe no Masamune and, as the wife of Tachibana no Michisada, Governor of Izumi, mother of Koshikibu no Naishi. The Prince of the Dazaifu is Prince Atsumichi, fourth son of Emperor Reizei, so called because he served as Governor-General of the Dazaifu. The late prince was Atsumichi's elder brother by the same mother, Prince Tametaka, who had been Izumi Shikibu's lover and died in the sixth month of Chōhō 4 (1002). A page boy was a youth who attended to the personal errands of a nobleman.
The prince was still near the veranda when he noticed the boy lingering in the shadows as if he had something to say, and asked how it had gone. The boy handed over Izumi Shikibu's "Kaoru ka ni yosouru yori wa hototogisu kikabaya onaji koe ya masaru to," and after reading it the prince wrote this poem.
Giving the reply to the boy, the prince said, "Tell no one of this. It looks too much like a love affair," and went inside. Izumi Shikibu found the poem charming, but thinking she should not answer every time, she sent no reply. The next day another poem came from the prince, and their correspondence began.
The first three lines mean "the cuckoo that perched and sang on the same branch," likening himself and his elder brother Prince Tametaka, born of the same mother and raised together, to cuckoos side by side on a single bough. The verb of the third line is marked with a past-tense auxiliary.
The lower verses mean "know that the voice does not change," ending in a particle that expresses a wish directed at another. Taking up her "cuckoo," "the same voice" and "finer," he leaves aside the question of which is finer and simply tells her that his heart is the same as his brother's, drawing close to her lingering love for the dead prince.
- Author
- Prince Atsumichi
- Source
- Izumi Shikibu Nikki
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