Hyakunin Isshu (One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each): Poem 53 (Mother of Michitsuna)

 Hyakunin Isshu, Poem 53

Translation and comments by Ad Blankestijn
(version September 2022)

the span of time
that I lie all alone, sighing,
until break of day -
do you have any idea
how long that is?

nageki tsutsu
hitori neru yo no
akuru ma wa
ika ni hisashiki
mono to ka wa shiru

なげきつつ
ひとりぬる夜の
明くる間は
いかに久しき
ものとかは知る

"Mother of Michitsuna" (937-995)

["Mother of Michitsuna", by Kunisada (1786-1864)]

According to the headnote in the Shuishu, the "Mother of Michitsuna" sent this poem to her husband, the Regent Fujiwara no Kaneie (929-990), when he complained about being kept waiting outside her gate after coming late one night ("my legs are sore from standing!"). In the poem she compares the really very short time the man had to stand outside with the long waiting for him to come to her house at night. She was the secondary consort of Kaneie, and as was usual in Heian times, we should have the situation before our eyes that she lived apart and that her husband now and then came to visit her. This is a straightforward poem, without difficult rhetorical flourishes.

Notes

• nagetsutsu: -tsutsu indicates continuation. The subject of nagetsutsu is not mentioned, but is "anata no konai koto wo".
• hitori nuru yo: "hitori dake de, wabishiku neru yoru"
• akuru ma ni: "yo ga akeru made no ma ni"
• ika ni hisashiki: ika ni = donna ni; hisashii = nagai
• mono to ka wa shiru: "donna ni nagai mono to gozonji desu ka? iya, gozonji de wa nai desho."
  
  

["Mother of Michitsuna" by Ryuryukyo Shinsai (1799-1823)]

The Poet

Born in 935 as the daughter of a provincial governor, Fujiwara no Tomoyasu, the Mother of Michitsuna was a lower- to mid-level member of the aristocratic class. In 954, at the age of nineteen, she married Fujiwara no Kaneie (929-990), who later became the Minister of the Right and Regent after his daughter gave birth to Emperor En'yu's son. Although Kaneie continued to climb the social hierarchy, the Mother of Michitsuna’s position as a secondary wife and mother of only one child left her in an unstable position. Her tenuous relations with Kaneie drove her to consider becoming a nun, but her son and others in her family convinced her to remain in the secular world. Not long after that, the Mother of Michitsuna's sixteen-year-long marriage came to an end. According to her diary, she devoted her life to her children, and Michitsuna later was able to attain the position of Major Captain of the Right (Udaisho).

"Fujiwara no Michitsuna no haha" ("the Mother of Michitsuna") is how this woman poet is known to history. We don't know her true name - as was usual in the Heian period, women did not use their name in public, but were called by the name of the office of their father, husband or son, or, as here, as just being the mother of a certain son (Michitsuna was not particularly famous, and we now only remember his name because of his mother!). Murasaki Shikibu, for example, was called "Shikibu" because her father had served in the Ministry of Ceremonial (Shikibu-sho).

The most famous work written by "the Mother of Michitsuna" is the Gossamer Diary (Kagero nikki), the earliest diary extant by a woman and a masterpiece of Heian-period prose literature (and, as some assert, a forerunner of the Japanese "I-Novel"), describing her unhappy relations with her husband Fujiwara no Kaneie during the years 954-974. It has been translated by Edward Seidensticker as The Gossamer Years.

In this diary the above poem is also quoted, but with a somewhat different setting. In the diary, Kaneie has begun seeing another woman and has not come to Michitsuna Mother's house for nights on end. So when he finally comes knocking at her gate, she refuses to open it and the next morning sends him the above poem attached to a faded chrysanthemum (as a reference to a change of heart). This may have been the beginning of the end of their marriage.

The "Mother of Michitsuna" was a skilled poet and thirty-six of her poems have been collected in the Shuishu and other imperial anthologies.

References: Pictures of the Heart, The Hyakunin Isshu in Word and Image by Joshua S. Mostow (University of Hawai'i Press, 1996); One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each, by Peter MacMIllan (Penguin Classics); Traditional Japanese Poetry, An Anthology, by Steven D. Carter (Stanford University Press, 1991); Hyakunin Isshu by Inoue Muneo, etc. (Shinchosha, 1990); Genshoku Hyakunin Isshu by Suzuki Hideo, etc. (Buneido, 1997); Chishiki Zero kara no Hyakunin Isshu, by Ariyoshi Tamotsu (Gentosha); Hyakunin Isshu Kaibo Zukan, by Tani Tomoko (X-Knowledge);  Ogura Hyakunin Isshu at Japanese Text Initiative (University of Virginia Library Etext Center); Hyakunin Isshu wo aruku by Shimaoka Shin (Kofusha Shuppan); Hyakunin Isshu, Ocho waka kara chusei waka e by Inoue Muneo (Chikuma Shoin, 2004); Basho's Haiku (2 vols) by Toshiharu Oseko (Maruzen, 1990); The Ise Stories by Joshua S. Mostow and Royall Tyler (University of Hawai'i Press, 2010); Kokin Wakashu, The First Imperial Anthology of Japanese Poetry by Helen Craig McCullough (Stanford University Press, 1985); Kokinshu, A Collection of Poems Ancient and Modern by Laurel Rasplica Rodd and Mary Catherine Henkenius (University of Tokyo Press, 1984); Kokin Wakashu (Shogakkan, 1994); Shinkokin Wakashu (Shogakkan, 1995); Taketori Monogatari-Ise Monogatari-Yamato Monogatari-Heichu Monogatari (Shogakkan, 1994).


    Photos: Wikimedia Commons

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