Reading 4e The Moon Viewing (Tsukimi) from

The Tales of Heike-Book V

　

tr. Kenneth L. Richard, July, 2004

On the ninth day of the sixth month, it was decided that the new capital would be built; by the tenth day of the eighth month, the ceremony was held to bless the ridge poles, and by the thirteenth day of the eleventh month, the Emperor made his way to the new palace. Everything went to ruin in Kyoto, while the new capital bustled. And so a tumultuous summer had passed, and already it was Fall. When the season was past its mid point, everyone in the new capital of Fukuhara decided to view the moon from the most famous spots; some, following in the footsteps of the great General Prince Genji, looked from the bay of Suma and Akashi, while others crossed the straits to Awaji Island to view it from the rocky beach at Eshima. Others ventured as far as Shirara, Fukiage, and Waka no ura in Ki, and some even watched the dawn from Sumiyoshi, Naniwa, Takasago, and Onoe. Customarily in the old capital people viewed the moon from Fushimi or the great pond at Hirosawa.

Among the moon viewers was the Tokudaiji Minister of the Left Fujiwara Sanesada who loved the moon over the old capital, and who went back from Fukuhara just after the tenth of the eighth month. Everything had utterly changed; weeds choked the gates of those houses that were left standing, the gardens damp and dewy. All was a mountain of sagebrush and scraggy grasses, desolate as a bird’s nest mourned by hordes of insects, a plain of wild yellow daisies and faint purple orchid-like bells. Only the great house of Sanesada’s sister the retired Empress, called the Konoe Riverside Palace, retained any semblance of its original splendor. Sanesada approached the south gate of the great house and had his servant knock upon its doors. From inside, a woman’s voice asked suspiciously: “Who goes there? We no longer have anyone to sweep away the dew from the sagebrush.” “It is I, Sanesada. I’ve come from Fukuhara.,” he replied. “This gate is bolted. Please enter through the small gate on the East side.” And so Sanesada was admitted from the Eastern gate. As he approached, he could hear the sound of a Biwa being plucked. The retired Empress had rolled up the blinds on the southern veranda and was amusing herself in memories of the past. “It must be a dream. Could it be real? “ she murmured as she beckoned to him. How much, thought Sanesada, this scene reminded him of the Uji chapters of the Genji story, at the mansion of the retired Prince Hachi when his daughters, in harmony with the poignancy of Autumn’s passing, played upon their lute throughout the night, to their heart’s content, until when the moon at dawn shone, it thrilled them so much that one of them beckoned at it, invitingly, with the lute’s broad plectrum.

A lady-in-waiting by the name of Matsuyoi lived in this house. The reason she was called Matsuyoi (Waiting for the Evening) was that on one occasion in the palace when she had been asked which of the two situations she thought more arresting, waiting for a lover to arrive in the evening, or seeing him leave in the morning, she made this poem: ‘ I hear the bell, tolling the deepening hours of the evening, as I wait for you; what is the crowing of a cock at dawn, to compare with that?”  From thenceforward, she was called the lady ‘waiting for the night.’ Sanesada called for her, and they sat talking of all manner of things both past and present, when, as the hour had grown quite late, he composed an Imayo ditty about the ruined state of the old city: ‘ The old capital, I come to see, the rampant grass plain, speaks to me of ruin; The moon’s bright light, shines into every crevice, the autumn wind’s gust, blows through to my bones.’ He sang the song three times, making all the ladies of the palace, particularly the Empress, cry into their sleeves.

As it soon grew light, Sanesada took his leave to return to Fukuhara. He called a Chamberlain who had accompanied him, and said: “ the lady-in-waiting seemed so sad to see me go. Please go back and put her at ease.” “I shall do as you say,” he replied as he set off. His poem: ‘What is there to compare with that? you say, yet the cock crowing at dawn today, for reasons unfathomable, is by far the sadder time.’ The lady-in-waiting wiped back her tears, and replied: ‘Nothing compares to the waiting, as I have said, for the tolling of the bell in the deepening night; but in truth, the inevitable parting at dawn, signaled by a cock, is the utmost.’

The Chamberlain returned and related his story to Sanesada. “I knew I was right to send you!” he said, greatly impressed. From that point henceforth, the young gentleman was nicknamed the ‘to compare with that’ Chamberlain.