FUJI NO URABA

This was the moment for His Excellency to launch into singing “new wisteria leaves,” at which the Secretary Captain picked a particularly long, dark cluster of blossoms and laid it beside the guest’s cup. The young gentleman struggled for a reply, and meanwhile His Excellency said, “I shall then complain to the wisteria blossoms comely purple hue, though I am not pleased at all that they have outreached the pine.”

Cup in hand, the Consultant Captain acknowledged him with a slight and thoroughly graceful bow. “Ah, how many times have I had to suffer through all too dewy springs, to come at last on this day when flowers burst into bloom?”, he replied and passed the cup to the Secretary Captain:

The wisteria that in tender bloom

recalls a fair maiden’s sleeves

no doubt looks lovelier still

to a ravished watcher’s eyes.

(The Tale of Genji, chap. 33, p. 564)