Kokinshu #348
Friday, 28 December 2012 09:05![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lnhammer When the Ninna Emperor was [still] Crown Prince, he sent his grandmother a silver cane for her eightieth birthday, and when [Henjô] saw it, he wrote this on the grandmother's behalf.
It must have been
the mighty gods who cut this:
for when I use it
I shall cross over even
the hill of a thousand years.
chihayaburu
kami ya kirikemu
tsuku kara ni
chitose no saka mo
koenuberanari
---L.
It must have been
the mighty gods who cut this:
for when I use it
I shall cross over even
the hill of a thousand years.
—27 December 2012
Original by Henjô. The identity of cane's recipient is unknown as no one in the historical records quite fits, a problem compounded by uncertainly over whether she was a grandmother or aunt -- the text actually says the latter, but the former was a near-homophone and chronologically more plausible. Wordplay lost in translation: tsuku can mean not only to "use" a cane, but to "start" a journey. An excellent example of Henjô's light social wit.chihayaburu
kami ya kirikemu
tsuku kara ni
chitose no saka mo
koenuberanari
---L.