Kokinshu #132

[lnhammer]

Written on seeing women returning from picking flowers on the last day of the Third Month.

    There's nothing, surely,
that can detain them, and yet,
    such futility! --
how this heart's drawn to each and
every scattering flower.

—7 August 2011

Original by Ôshikôchi no Mitsune. The flowers as symbols for the women cuts two ways: on the one hand, he's flirting with them -- on the other, it's a reminder that they, like the flowers, will one day fade. Impressive density for improvised social verse. I don't think this is going so far as hinting they should gather rosebuds while they may, as I would expect in a poem in the Western Tradition, but I could be wrong. The flowers, for what it's worth, would be probably be for placing on altars.


todomubeki
mono to wa nashi ni
hakanaku mo
chiru hana-goto ni
taguu kokoro ka

---L.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I agree with you on the rosebud-gathering thing. For one thing I just don't think that Mitsune was enough of a player to attempt seriously hitting on multiple women at once.

My edition (Iwanami) says that the "picking flowers" here is supposed to refer to flowers for use in Buddhist (=memorial) services, not just for fun. I suppose that adds to the whole "vanity, vanity" thing too.

[lnhammer]

So specifically memorial services rather than a seasonal holiday/observation? Interesting. I guess I was imagining something more on the lines of for a household altar or something, which is probably terribly anachronistic. (The use of the flowers is only sometimes touched on in commentaries I've looked at, which makes me wonder how speculative vs. consensus that interpretation is.) But yes, that brings out even more the vanity, vanity thing.

---L.