Kokinshu #797

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    So indeed it is:
that which changes and fades,
    its color unseen,
is the flower in the heart
of a man of the world.

—3 November 2010

Original by Ono no Komachi. As may be obvious given the tenor of the metaphor, while iro is literally "color" and by extension "appearance," it can also have the connotation of "feeling." Which way to understand it depends on a bigger issue, that of an orthographic ambiguity: in manuscript the poem's second word can be read as either miede "is not seen/shown, and" or miete "is seen/shown, and" -- the diacritical mark that distinguishes the two pronunciations would not be invented for a few centuries. Either reading gives irony, the second more subtle than the first, as it implies that the man is showing the same appearance (color) all the while his feelings (the flower) are changing. While the whole thing is much debated, miede is the more common reading -- and more specifically is what's in my diacritical-supplying base text, and so is what I've translated. Finally, utsurou can mean either "change" or "fade" -- I went with both to sustain the flower=feelings metaphor.


iro miede
utsurou mono wa
yo no naka no
hito no kokoro no
hana ni zo arikeru

---L.