¹ With thanks for editorial and translation assistance from Lili Selden.

² These important structural features are noted by Donald Keene in Seeds of the Heart: Japanese Literature from Earliest Times to the Late Sixteenth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), p. 523.

³ Editor's note: David Dutcher's submission to the Kyoko Selden Memorial Translation Prize was about forty pages long. This excerpt, about half the length of his submission, centers around protagonist Sagoromo's love for Genji no Miya.

⁴ Nakazumi, a character in Utsuho monogatari, seeks the hand of Atemiya who has the same mother as he. Nihon Koten Bungaku Taikei (NKBT) 10, p. 229. Kaoru, the putative son of Genji, the eponymous hero of Genji monogatari, conceives a passing infatuation with Reizeiin's first princess (or “Ichi no Miya” in the source text), who is his cousin. NKBT 17, p. 228.

⁵ hikiuta (a poem alluding to a prior poem)

Fujiwara no Motokata 藤原元方 (888-953), Shika wakashū 詞花和歌集 188

⁶ They Learned to Their Regret みずから悔ゆる is the title of a now lost monogatari from which there remain only nine waka collected in Fūyōwakashū 風葉和歌集 (1271).

⁷ A priest of high rank would still be far beneath Sagoromo. Moreover, there were strict sumptuary regulations detailing the decorative devices a person of each rank was entitled to use on their carriage and the chief rule of the road was always to defer to one's betters.

⁸ “Asukai” 飛鳥井, a place name appearing in a type of popular song known as saibara 催馬楽, conveys the randy nature of Sagoromo's curiosity about the woman in the other carriage: 飛鳥井に宿りはすべしや Should I spend a night with her at Asukai? / かげもよし みもひもさむし The shade is deep and the water cool /みまくさもよし Thick too the graze for horses. (Takeda Yūkichi 武田佑吉 ed. Kagura-uta, Saibara 神楽歌 • 催馬楽, p. 111.) Editor's note: Characters in classical Japanese fiction were most often referred to by their titles (e.g., “Genji no Miya” means “the Genji Princess”), a sobriquet derived either from association with an image in a poem (e.g., the character Asukai is nicknamed after the aforementioned reference to Asukai as a place-name), or a nickname evoking, perhaps, a physical trait of that individual (e.g., “Kaoru” in Genji monogatari is so-called because of his unique fragrance).

⁹ This is an allusion to poem 1045 in Kokinwakashū 古今和歌集. Fujiwara no Nakahira 藤原の仲平 (875-945) vows to follow his lover, Lady Ise, to far China. No match for doughty Nakahira is the feckless priest.

¹⁰ The allusion invokes an incantatory lubricity. (Adachi Plain was in Mutsu province.)

Kokinwakashū 古今和歌集 1078

¹¹ Here an anonymous waka pun (夫木和歌抄 14884) pivoting on the place name Nashihara 梨原, a post station in Ōmi no Kuni (now Shiga Prefecture), yields the sense “none do I love so much as I do you.” Nashihara is an example of kago 歌語, a congeries of usages peculiar to waka, and includes the items: makura kotoba (e.g., 足引きの[やま]; see note 9A), uta makura (e.g., 蛙鳴く井出; see note 9B), or metonym (kari ga ne 雁が音 for kari (wild goose). 9A. The phrase “the very flower of spring” appears in the record of a poetry contest (Shimpen kokka taikan, vol. 5, p. 101) sponsored by Princess Baishi禖子内親王 and held a few days after the tenth of the 3rd month of a year not long after 1058 when she stepped down as Kamo priestess; its source is a poem on the theme of “willows and cherries” by Mimasaka 美作, who participated in 21 of the 25 poetry contests sponsored by Baishi in her lifetime and contributed 41 poems.

The epithet hana koso haru no may also have been an encomium to Baishi, who had long been unwell but was now apparently on the mend. (In the opening paragraphs of Book 37 of Eiga monogatari, Baishi is described as having “lost her mind” 御心をたがわせ給いて.) The prose introduction to this truncated four-poet, eight-round contest reads, in part: “Saying she (Baishi) wished to see others besides the cherry, she looked out the finest and had them all brought and replanted together.” One can discern echoes of these doings in the opening paragraph of Sagoromo, for, though she was not among the participating poets, Senji it 宣旨 (a lady-in-waiting of Baishi's to whom authorship of Sagoromo is ascribed), would have read the verses and shared the impression the event had on other members of Baishi's retinue. Record of this poem contest appears also in Gunsho ruijū 群書類従. 9B. Ide 井手, south of the capital, was renowned for its frogs and kerria:

Anonymous Kokinwakashū 古今和歌集150 The phrase かわづなくゐで is an example of an uta makura 歌枕which is attached to place names. It is one of a variety of set poetic phrases, or kago 歌語, used in Sagoromo.

¹² An allusion to the anonymous Kokinwakashū 古今和歌集 717:

¹³ An allusion to the anonymous Shūiwakashū 拾遺和歌集 1230, for which a complete translation, in four lines, appears in the text: はし鷹のとかへる山の椎柴の葉がへはすとも君はかへせじ