桜町
平安時代中期の偉大な歌人、紀貫之がこの地に住んでいたと言われています。敷地内には数多くの桜の木が植えられた美しい庭があったとされ、後に桜町邸として知られるようになりました。
和歌を詠むことは宮中やその周辺に暮らす貴族たちの文化生活の中で中心的な役割を担っていました。彼らの暮らした家はほとんど残っていませんが、彼らの残した和歌は彼らの優雅な世界を垣間見る窓口となってくれます。貫之は桜の花びらが舞い散る様を雪になぞらえて、次のような精妙な歌を詠んでいます。
桜ちる木のした風は寒からで空に知られぬ雪ぞ降りける
（拾遺集64番）
近くには中川が流れていました。中川は『源氏物語』にもたびたび登場します。「花散里」の巻で、光源氏は次のような歌を詠みます。
橘の香をなつかしみほととぎす花散る里をたづねてぞとふ
Site of the Sakuramachi Residence
Amongst the greatest of the waka poets, Ki no Tsurayuki (872–945) is said to have lived in this area in the mid-Heian period. The grounds here were noted for an abundance of cherry trees and a delightful garden that later became known as the Sakuramachi residence (cherry tree district).
The composition of Japanese waka poetry played a central role in the cultural life of the nobles who lived in and around the palace. While little remains of the residences in which they lived, the poems they wrote open an enduring window onto their elegant world. In the following exquisite poem, Ki no Tsurayuki compares the scattering of blossoms to a snow fall:
The wind that is blowing
beneath the cherry blossom tree
is not cold at all,
and the blossoms that fall—
A snow that has never known a cloud.
(Sakura chiru / kono shita kaze wa/ samukara de /sora ni shirare nu/yuki zo furi keru)
(From the collection of poems Shui-shu (ca.1006)No. 64)
The Nakagawa River flowed nearby. This river appears several times in Japan’s most famous novel, The Tale of Genji (early 11th century), in particular in the chapter “The Lady at the Villa of Scattering Orange Blossoms.”
(Hanachirusato) Genji recites this poem:
The cuckoo, pining for the fragrance
of orange blossoms,
which fill his heart
with nostalgia for the past
visits the village where the blossoms fall.
(Tachibana no / ka o natsukashi mi / hototogisu / hana chiru sato o / tazunete zo tou)
