Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan. Shikibu Murasaki
without tiring, I gazed at the cherry-blossoms of your garden.
The Spring was closing – they were about to fall —
Always when the flowers came and went, I could think of nothing but those days when my nurse died, and sadness descended upon me, which grew deeper when I studied the handwriting of the Honoured Daughter of the First Adviser.
Once in the Rice-Sprout month, when I was up late reading a romance, I heard a cat mewing with a long-drawn-out cry. I turned, wondering, and saw a very lovely cat. "Whence does it come?" I asked. "Sh," said my sister, "do not tell anybody. It is a darling cat and we will keep it."
The cat was very sociable and lay beside us. Some one might be looking for her [we thought], so we kept her secretly. She kept herself aloof from the vulgar servants, always sitting quietly before us. She turned her face away from unclean food, never eating it. She was tenderly cared for and caressed by us.
Once sister was ill, and the family was rather upset. The cat was kept in a room facing the north [i.e. a servant's room], and never was called. She cried loudly and scoldingly, yet I thought it better to keep her away and did so. Sister, suddenly awakening, said to me, "Where is the cat kept? Bring her here." I asked why, and sister said: "In my dream the cat came to my side and said, 'I am the altered form of the late Honoured Daughter of the First Adviser to the King. There was a slight cause [for this]. Your sister has been thinking of me affectionately, so I am here for a while, but now I am among the servants. O how dreary I am!' So saying she wept bitterly. She appeared to be a noble and beautiful person and then I awoke to hear the cat crying! How pitiful!"
The story moved me deeply and after this I never sent the cat away to the north-facing room, but waited on her lovingly. Once, when I was sitting alone, she came and sat before me, and, stroking her head, I addressed her: "You are the first daughter of the Noble Adviser? I wish to let your father know of it." The cat watched my face and mewed, lengthening her voice.
It may be my fancy, but as I was watching her she seemed no common cat. She seemed to understand my words, and I pity her.
I had heard that a certain person possessed the Chogonka39 [Song of the Long Regret] retold from the original of the Chinese poet Li T'ai Po. I longed to borrow it, but was too shy to say so.
On the seventh day of the Seventh month I found a happy means to send my word [the suggestion of my wish]:
This is the night when in the ancient Past,
The Herder Star embarked to meet the Weaving One;
In its sweet remembrance the wave rises high in the River of Heaven. 40
Even so swells my heart to see the famous book.
The answer was:
The star gods meet on the shore of the Heavenly River,
Like theirs full of ecstasy is my heart
And grave things of daily life are forgotten
On the night your message comes to me.
On the thirteenth day of that month the moon shone very brightly. Darkness was chased away even from every corner of the heavens. It was about midnight and all were asleep.
We were sitting on the veranda. My sister, who was gazing at the sky thoughtfully, said, "If I flew away now, leaving no trace behind, what would you think of it?" She saw that her words shocked me, and she turned the conversation [lightly] to other things, and we laughed.
Then I heard a carriage with a runner before it stop near the house. The man in the carriage called out, "Ogi-no-ha! Ogi-no-ha!" [Reed-leaf, a woman's name or pet name] twice, but no woman made reply. The man cried in vain until he was tired of it, and played his flute [a reed-pipe] more and more searchingly in a very beautiful rippling melody, and [at last] drove away.
Flute music in the night,
"Autumn Wind" 41 sighing,
Why does the reed-leaf make no reply?
Thus I challenged my sister, and she took it up:
Alas! light of heart
Who could so soon give over playing!
The wind did not wait
For the response of the reed-leaf.
We sat together looking up into the firmament, and went to bed after daybreak.
At midnight of the Deutzia month [April, 1024] a fire broke out, and the cat which had been waited on as a daughter of the First Adviser was burned to death. She had been used to come mewing whenever I called her by the name of that lady, as if she had understood me. My father said that he would tell the matter to the First Adviser, for it is a strange and heartfelt story. I was very, very sorry for her.
Our new temporary shelter was far narrower than the other. I was sad, for we had a very small garden and no trees. I thought with regret of the old spacious garden which was wild as a deep wood, and in time of flowers and red leaves the sight of it was never inferior to the surrounding mountains.
In the garden of the opposite house white and red plum-blossoms grew in confusion and their perfume came on the wind and filled me with thoughts of our old home.
When from the neighbouring garden the perfume-laden air
Saturates my soul with memories,
Rises the thought of the beloved plum-tree
Blooming under the eaves of the house which is gone.
On the moon-birth of the Rice-Sprout month my sister died after giving birth to a child. From childhood, even a stranger's death had touched my heart deeply. This time I lamented, filled with speechless pity and sorrow.
While mother and the others were with the dead, I lay with the memory-awakening children one on either side of me. The moonlight found its way through the cracks of the roof [perhaps of their temporary dwelling] and illumined the face of the baby. The sight gave my heart so deep a pang that I covered its face with my sleeve, and drew the other child closer to my side, mothering the unfortunate.
After some days one of my relatives sent me a romance entitled "The Prince Yearning after the Buried," with the following note: "The late lady had asked me to find her this romance. At that time I thought it impossible, but now to add to my sorrow, some one has just sent it to me."
I answered:
What reason can there be that she
Strangely should seek a romance of the buried?
Buried now is the seeker
Deep under the mosses.
My sister's nurse said that since she had lost her, she had no reason to stay and went back to her own home weeping.
Thus death or parting separates us each from the other,
Why must we part? Oh, world too sad for me!
"For remembrance of her I wanted to write about her," began a letter from her nurse – but it stopped short with the words, "Ink seems to have frozen up, I cannot write any more."42
How shall I gather memories of my sister?
The stream of letters is congealed.
No comfort may be found in icicles.
So I wrote, and the answer was:
Like the comfortless plover of the beach
In the sand printing characters soon to be washed away,
Unable to leave a more enduring trace in this fleeting world.
That nurse went to see the grave and returned sobbing,
Readers are urged to read the delightful essay of Lafcadio Hearn called "The Romance of the Milky Way" (Chogonka). Here it must suffice to relate the story of "Tanabata-himé" and the herdsman. Tanabata-tsume was the daughter of the god of the sky. She rejoiced to weave garments for her father and had no greater pleasure than that, until one day Hikiboshi, a young herdsman, leading an ox, passed by her door. Divining her love for him, her father gave his daughter the young herdsman for her husband, and all went well, until the young couple grew too fond of each other and the weaving was neglected. Thereupon the great god was displeased and "they were sentenced to live apart with the Celestial River between them," but in pity of their love they were permitted to meet one night a year, on the seventh day of the Seventh month. On that night the herdsman crosses the River of Heaven where Tanabata-tsume is waiting for him on the other side, but woe betide if the night is cloudy or rainy! Then the waters of the River of Heaven rise, and the lovers must wait full another year before the boat can cross.
Many of our beautiful poems have been written on this legend; sometimes it is Tanabata-himé who is waiting for her lord, sometimes it is Hikiboshi who speaks. The festival has been celebrated for 1100 years in Japan, and there is no country village which does not sing these songs on the seventh night of the Seventh month, and make offerings to the star gods of little poems tied to the freshly cut bamboo branches.
River of Heaven: Milky Way.
Name of an old song.
The continuous writing of the cursive Japanese characters is often compared to a meandering river. "Ink seems to have frozen up" means that her eyes are dim with tears, and no more she can write continuously and flowingly.