Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan. Shikibu Murasaki

cherry-blossoms,

      Has not the Spring come for you yet?

      Or does the perfume of flowers not reach you?

      I made a journey, and passed many a moonlit night in a house beside a bamboo wood. Wind rustled its leaves and my sleep was disturbed.

      Night after night the bamboo leaves sigh,

      My dreams are broken and a vague, indefinite sadness fills my heart.

      In Autumn [1026] I went to live elsewhere and sent a poem:

      I am like dew on the grass —

      And pitiable wherever I may be —

      But especially am I oppressed with sadness

      In a field with a thin growth of reeds.

      After that time I was somehow restless and forgot about the romances. My mind became more sober and I passed many years without doing any remarkable thing. I neglected religious services and temple observances. Those fantastic ideas [of the romances] can they be realized in this world? If father could win some good position I also might enter into a much nobler life. Such unreliable hopes then occupied my daily thoughts.

      At last45 father was appointed Governor of a Province very far in the East.

      [Here the diary skips six years. The following is reminiscent.]

      He [father] said: "I was always thinking that if I could win a position as Governor in the neighbourhood of the Capital I could take care of you to my heart's desire. I would wish to bring you down to see beautiful scenery of sea and mountain. Moreover, I wished that you could live attended beyond [the possibilities] of our [present] position. Our Karma relation from our former world must have been bad. Now I have to go to so distant a country after waiting so long! When I brought you, who were a little child, to the Eastern Province [at his former appointment], even a slight illness caused me much trouble of mind in thinking that should I die, you would wander helpless in that far country. There were many fears in a stranger's country, and I should have lived with an easier mind had I been alone. As I was then accompanied by all my family, I could not say or do what I wanted to say or do, and I was ashamed of it. Now you are grown up [she was twenty-five years old] and I am not sure that I can live long.

      It is not so unusual a fate to be helpless in the Capital, but the saddest thing of all would be to wander in the Eastern Province like any country-woman.46 There are no relatives in the Capital upon whom we could rely to foster you, yet I cannot refuse the appointment which has been made after such long waiting. So you must remain here, and I must depart for Eternity. – Oh, in what way may I provide a way for you to live in the Capital decently!"

      Night and day he lamented, saying these things, and I forgot all about flowers or maple leaves, grieving sadly, but there was no help for it.

      He went down47 on the thirteenth of the Seventh month, 1032.

      For several days before that I could not remain still in my own room, for I thought it difficult to see him again.