A meizanologist's diary (72)

30 March: for some days, on the Sensei’s local hill, we’ve seen strollers anxiously inspecting the buds of some glossy-leaved plants at the roadsides. And today their patience is rewarded: the katakuri or fawn lilies (Erythronium japonicum) are in full bloom. It’s a noble flower, says the Sensei. Don’t you mean ‘gracious’, I ask. No, I mean noble, she replies.

Back home, I look up the katakuri in a book about the flowers that appear in the Man'yōshū. If you accept that katakuri were known as “katako” back in the eighth century, then there they are in a poem by Ōtomo no Yakamochi (Man'yōshū XIX.4143):

もののふの八十娘子らが汲み乱ふ寺井の上の堅香子の花

Which PoetryNet translates more or less as:

A crowd, a host of maidens
Drawing their water
From the temple well;
Like a cluster of fawn lilies.

As I thought, says the Sensei, who is more learned than she lets on, the invocation introduces a noble subject. By the way, where did you find that book? Isn't it the one I remember buying together in Nara, I ask. You mean, she says, the book that I bought you there…

Our memories, evanescent as flowers. And vice versa, of course.