So the flower has wilted during the long spring rains, just as my beauty has faded during my forlorn years in this world.
花の色は | hana no iro wa |
うつりにけりな | utsurinikeri na |
いたづらに | itazura ni |
わが身世にふる | wa ga mi yo ni furu |
ながめせしまに | nagame seshi ma ni |
Ono no Komachi
Ono no Komachi 小野小町 (dates uncertain) was a court lady and one of the outstanding poets of early Heian period (平安時代Heian jidai; 794−1192), but most of what is told about her is nothing more than mere legends.
Komachi was most likely from the Ono 小野 family, but her lineage remains a topic of debate. The only matter multiple sources seem to agree on is her connection to Dewa 出羽 province (modern-day Yamagata 山形 and Akita 秋田 prefectures in Northern Japan), but nothing can be said with certainty. Some theories state she was daughter of Dewa district governor Ono no Yoshizane 小野良真 (dates unknown) and granddaughter of scholar and poet, imperial consultant (参議 sangi) Ono no Takamura 小野篁 (802−853; Hyakunin Isshu 11), others − that she was daughter of Dewa governor Ono no Takio 小野滝雄 (dates unknown). But all of the theories are highly questionable.
Komachi is thought to have been a court lady during the reigns of Emperor Ninmyō (仁明天皇 Ninmyō tennō; 810−850; reigned 833−850) and his first-born son Emperor Montoku (文徳天皇 Montoku tennō; 827−858, reigned 850−858). She likely served in the imperial court together with her older sister, recorded in Kokinshū 古今集 (Collection of Poems Ancient and Modern; 905) and Gosenshū 後撰集 (Later Collection; 953) as Komachi ga Ane 小町が姉 and Ono no Komachi ga Ane 小野小町が姉 (Older sister of [Ono no] Komachi). Either of the sisters could have been called Ono no Yoshiko 小野吉子, because a court lady of this name is recorded in Shoku Nihon Kōki 続日本後紀 (Continued Later Chronicle of Japan; 869) as having served in Ninmyō’s court in 842, but scholarly consensus leans towards associating the name with Komachi’s sister.
Other than the speculation about Komachi’s origin or standing, most of what can be said about her comes from the poetry in Kokinshū and Gosenshū. Although Komachi is attributed over sixty poems in imperial collections, only the eighteen in Kokinshū and four in Gosenshū are considered authentic. Later attributions come from a collection of over one hundred poems (or less than seventy in other variants) known as Ono no Komachi Shū 小野小町集 (Collected Poems of Ono no Komachi), which was compiled by generations after her, and most of its poems are therefore considered apocryphal.
Kokinshū and Gosenshū, however, reveal poems for Yoshimine no Munesada 良岑宗貞 (816−890), better known as Archbishop Henjō (僧正遍昭 Sōjō Henjō; Hyakunin Isshu 12) and Fun’ya no Yasuhide 文室康秀 (dates uncertain; Hyakunin Isshu 22), suggesting at least friendly relations with the famous poets. More importantly, the anthologies show Komachi as a poet who excelled in the use of kakekotoba 掛詞 (pivot words) and engo 縁語(associated words) to compose rhetorically complex and dense in meaning poetry. But nevertheless, in a manner hardly welcome to a modern reader, Ki no Tsurayuki 紀貫之 (866 or 872–945?; Hyakunin Isshu 35) in his Japanese preface (仮名序 Kanajo) to Kokinshū wrote:
Ono no Komachi belongs to the same line as Sotoorihime of old. Her poetry is moving and lacking in strength. It reminds us of a beautiful woman suffering from an illness. Its weakness is probably due to her sex. (trans. McCullough 1985, 7)
Perhaps it was the denseness of meaning that Komachi was able to produce that made her poems seem beautiful yet fragile, as in her poetry the first reading can seem to fall apart the moment one reads the poem the second time. But it therefore embodies the evanescence of beauty, and perhaps what Tsurayuki called a weakness was in fact Komachi’s greatest strength, and that is at least partly attested in her now being remembered as one of Tsurayuki’s Six Poetic Immortals (六歌仙 Rokkasen), as well as one of Fujiwara no Kintō’s 藤原公任 (966–1041; Hyakunin Isshu 55) Thirty Six Poetic Immortals (三十六歌仙 Sanjūrokkasen).
And while we know little of the real Komachi, legends about her, constructed from her poems and Tsurayuki’s words, transcended not only her time, but her historical period and her genre. Her persona can be seen in nō 能theatre plays of Muromachi (室町時代 Muromachi jidai; 1336–1573) and kabuki 歌舞伎 plays of Edo (江戸時代 Edo jidai; 1603–1867) period, and even in modern novels.
Faded in vain,
colour of the flowers
In Kokinshū the poem is preceded by a headnote dai shirazu 題知らず or topic unknown, so there are no obvious pointers for its interpretation and the task is evermore complicated because the poem uses inversions and kakekotoba (pivot words) to condense and intensify the meanings, but therefore requires attentive reading between the (or more accurately, below the visible) lines.
The opening two lines of the poem − hana no iro wa / utsurinikeri na − are grammatically the closing lines, as keri is used in final form or shūshikei 終止形 and na is an emphatic final particle. Both of them serve as a full stop in a language that originally had no punctuation. The first line, hana no iro wa, can be simply translated as “colour of the flowers”, and because the poem comes from a section of cherry blossom (桜 sakura) poems of Kokinshū, hana (“flowers”) are taken to mean cherry blossoms. In the second line, because of the preceding iro (“colour”), utsuri (in ren’yōkei 連用形or continuative form) means “to fade”, ni (ren’yōkei of perfective auxiliary verb nu) marks a finished naturally occurring action, and keri marks realisation. One could say: ah, the colour of the flowers, has ended up fading!
The third line − itazura ni − can be translated as “in vain”. Although it is perfectly fine to interpret the line as grammatically bound to the closing lines, the line is as if floating freely and it has been suggested numerous times that it could be seen as another case of inversion and the line could therefore be bound to utsurinikeri na of the second line, rendering the inversion-reversed reading as hana no iro wa / itazura ni / utsurinikeri na: “ah, in vain the colour of the flowers has faded!”.
The upper half (上の句 kami no ku, 5-7-5) of the poem by itself seems like a late spring composition about fading cherry blossoms, but the lower half (下の句 shimo no ku, 7-7) infuses additional meanings and there Komachi’s mastery of poetic techniques truly shines.
The closing lines − wa ga mi yo ni furu / nagame seshi ma ni − are a complex amalgamation of three distinct phrases:
wa ga mi yo ni furu わが身世に経る |
| My time has passed | ||
| furu nagame 降る 長雨 | Falling long rains | ||
| nagame seshi ma ni 眺めせしまに | While I was gazing sunk in thought | ||
In the closing lines, both furu and nagame are pivot words (kakekotoba). Furu carries meanings of “[time] passing” and “[rains] falling”, while nagame means “long rains” and “gazing while sunk in thought”.
The fourth line, wa ga mi yo ni furu, uses furu in the meaning of “[time] passing”. Wa ga mi literally means “one’s body” but also “one’s self”, “myself”, while yo ni furu carries the meaning of one’s “time passing in this world” and implies growing old. This line therefore suggests that the opening line of the poem − hana no iro wa − can also be interpreted as a metaphor for woman’s physical beauty.
The final line, nagame seshi ma ni, uses nagame in its “gazing while sunk in thought” meaning but maintains it as a noun. It is thus followed by a verb su* (“to do”) in its mizenkei 未然形 (imperfective) form se, attached to which is shi − rentaikei 連体形 (attributive form) of auxiliary verb ki, denoting personal past. Ki is used in rentaikei because it modifies another noun − ma, which means “period [while]”.
Hidden between the two lines of the lower half of the poem is also a line created purely with kakekotoba. Here furu nagame merges into “falling rains”, which explain why the colour of the flowers has faded, but also reminds of the poet, whose youthful beauty has disappeared without anyone seeing her, as if they were discouraged from visiting in the rain.
And so Komachi constructs a multilayered, breathtakingly beautiful yet difficult poem, – a technical tour de force infused with so many meanings it is almost overwhelming:
Colour of the flowers
has faded
in vain
my time has gone, while I was
gazing deep in thought, as long rains kept falling.
* Rentaikei (attributive form) of su is suru. In late-Heian period suru began to be used as shūshikei (final form) as well and remains in such use to this day as a common verb suru. However, traces of its irregular conjugation remain and we therefore have such cases as sezu せず.
Illustrations
Square illustration: Chōyaku Hyakunin Isshu: Uta Koi 超訳百人一首 うた恋い, dir. Kasai Ken‘ichi カサヰケンイチ, TYO Animations, 2012. / Edited by author of the blog.
Poet card: Ono no Komachi by Katsukawa Shunshō 勝川春章 1775, carved and pained by David Bull in 1989.
Poem sheet: Chōyaku Hyakunin Isshu: Uta Koi, 2012. / Edited by author of the blog.