Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan. Shikibu Murasaki

seek her in the field, but she is not there,

      Nor is she in the smoke of the cremation.

      Where is her last dwelling-place?

      How can I find it?

      The lady who had been my stepmother heard of this [and wrote]:

      When we wander in search of her,

      Ignorant of her last dwelling-place,

      Standing before the thought

      Tears must be our guide.

      The person who had sent "The Prince Yearning after the Buried" wrote:

      How she must have wandered seeking the unfindable

      In the unfamiliar fields of bamboo grasses,

      Vainly weeping!

      Reading these poems my brother, who had followed the funeral that night, composed a poem:

      Before my vision

      The fire and smoke of burning

      Arose and died again.

      To bamboo fields there is no more returning,

      Why seek there in vain?

      It snowed for many days, and I thought of the nun who lived on Mount Yoshino, to whom I wrote:

      Snow has fallen

      And you cannot have

      Even the unusual sight of men

      Along the precipitous path of the Peak of Yoshino.

      On the Sociable month of the next year father was looking forward with happy expectation to the night when he might expect an appointment as Governor of a Province. He was disappointed, and a person who might have shared our joy wrote to me, saying:

      "I anxiously waited for the dawn with uncertain hope."

      The temple bell roused me from dreams

      And waiting for the starlit dawn

      The night, alas! was long as are

      One hundred autumn nights.

      I wrote back:

      Long was the night.

      The bell called from dreams in vain,

      For it did not toll our realized hopes.

      Towards the moon-hidden days [last days] of the Rice-Sprout month I went for a certain reason to a temple at Higashiyama.43 On the way the nursery beds for rice-plants were filled with water, and the fields were green all over with the young growing rice. It was a smile-presenting sight. It gave a feeling of loneliness to see the dark shadow of the mountain close before me. In the lovely evenings water-rails chattered in the fields.

      The water-rails cackle as if they were knocking at the gate,

      But who would be deceived into opening the door, saying,

      Our friend has come along the mountain path in the dark night?

      As the place was near the Reizan Temple I went there to worship. Arriving so far I was fatigued, and drank from a stone-lined well beside the mountain temple, scooping the water into the hollow of my hand. My friend said, "I could never have enough of this water." "Is it the first time," I asked, "that you have tasted the satisfying sweetness of a mountain well drunk from the hollow of your hand?" She said, "It is sweeter than to drink from a shallow spring, which becomes muddy even from the drops which fall from the hand which has scooped it up."44 We came home from the temple in the full brightness of evening sunshine, and had a clear view of Kioto below us.

      My friend, who had said that a spring becomes muddy even with drops falling into it, had to go back to the Capital.

      I was sorry to part with her and sent word the next morning:

      When the evening sun descends behind the mountain peak,

      Will you forget that it is I who gaze with longing

      Towards the place where you are?

      The holy voices of the priests reciting sutras in their morning service could be heard from my house and I opened the door. It was dim early dawn; mist veiled the green forest, which was thicker and darker than in the time of flowers or red leaves. The sky seemed clouded this lovely morning. Cuckoos were singing on the near-by trees.

      O for a friend – that we might see and listen together!

      O the beautiful dawn in the mountain village! —

      The repeated sound of cuckoos near and far away.

      On that moon-hidden day cuckoos sung clamorously on trees towards the glen. "In the Royal City poets may be awaiting you, cuckoos, yet you sing here carelessly from morning till night!"

      One who sat near me said: "Do you think that there is one person, at least, in the Capital who is listening to cuckoos, and thinking of us at this moment?" – and then:

      Many in the Royal City like to gaze on the calm moon.

      But is there one who thinks of the deep mountain

      Or is reminded of us hidden here?

      I replied:

      In the dead of night, moon-gazing,

      The thought of the deep mountain affrighted,

      Yet longings for the mountain village

      At all other moments filled my heart.

      Once, towards dawn, I heard footsteps which seemed to be those of many persons coming down the mountain. I wondered and looked out. It was a herd of deer which came close to our dwelling. They cried out. It was not pleasant to hear them near by.

      It is sweet to hear the love-call of a deer to its mate,

      In Autumn nights, upon the distant hills.

      I heard that an acquaintance had come near my residence and gone back without calling on me. So I wrote:

      Even this wandering wind among the pines of the mountain —

      I've heard that it departs with murmuring sound.

      [That is, you are not like it. You do not speak when going away.]

      In the Leaf-Falling month [September] I saw the moon more than twenty days old. It was towards dawn; the mountain-side was gloomy and the sound of the waterfall was all [I heard]. I wish that lovers [of nature] may see the after-dawn-waning moon in a mountain village at the close of an autumn night.

      I went back to Kioto when the rice-fields, which had been filled with water when I came, were dried up, the rice being harvested. The young plants in their bed of water – the plants harvested – the fields dried up – so long I remained away from home.

      'T was the moon-hidden of the Gods-absent month when I went there again for temporary residence. The thick grown leaves which had cast a dark shade were all fallen. The sight was heartfelt over all. The sweet, murmuring rivulet was buried under fallen leaves and I could see only the course of it.

      Even water could not live on —

      So lonesome is the mountain

      Of the leaf-scattering stormy wind.

      [At about this time the author of this diary seems to have had some family troubles. Her father received no appointment from the King – they were probably poor, and her gentle, poetic nature did not incline her to seek useful friends at court; therefore many of the best years of her youth were spent in obscurity – a great contrast to the "Shining-Prince" dreams of her childhood.]

      I went back to Kioto saying that I should come again the next Spring, could I live so long, and

43

A mountain in a suburb of Kioto.

44

This conversation in the original is a play upon words which cannot be translated.