To the person breaking off the branch giving its fragrance the plum blossom. taoraruru hito ni kaoru ya ume no hana 手折らるゝ 人に薫るや 梅の花 chiyojo 千代女

Kaga no Chiyo's verse is about answering harm with kindness. Someone breaks a branch from the plum tree, and the plum gives that person its scent. She gave the verse a title that says so: on repaying enmity with kindness. In our reading, as in her title and in a Japanese textbook of 1909, the verse has two faces, a flower and a person who returns good for harm. R. H. Blyth found it moralistic, and Japanese sermons and books of maxims kept it as a lesson.

In the Japanese, 手折らるゝ人に is to the person by whom it is broken off. The verb is passive, so the plum is the subject and the one who breaks it receives the scent. 薫るや is it gives its scent, and 梅の花, the plum blossom, is the season word for spring. One of the hands writes 薫る and 梅 in kana, as かおる and うめ, an artistic choice, and another writes 人 as ひと.

The English is Timothy L. Jackowski's, made for Takase Studios.

Indeed the person breaking the plum branch committed a wrong, but still, the plum blossom gave of itself.

The breaking of the branch seems so masculine and the plum blossom giving its fragrance seems so feminine. I can't help but think that Chiyojo was referring to being treated unkindly by a man she cared about but rather than responding in kind, she responded with feminine kindness.

Calligraphy Notes:

1) The character ゝ repeats the last character. So るる and るゝ are both read ruru. Master Takase uses both in the designs making her selection based on which she thinks will look and balance better.

2) 薫る (kaoru) meaning "to smell sweet; to be fragrant" is written at least three different ways 香る, 薫る, and 馨る. Three of the designs use the second, 薫る, and one writes the word in kana, かおる, an artistic choice.

Translation Notes:

手折らるゝ 人に薫るや 梅の花

1) "Chiyojo" also went by Chiyo-ni. According to Patricia Donegan, "Chiyo-ni's given birthname was not Chiyo-ni but 'Chiyo,' meaning 'a thousand years'; the feminine suffix 'jo' was added, so she was sometimes called 'Chiyo-jo' until she changed her name to 'Chiyo-ni,' when she added the suffix 'ni' (nun). However, like many poets in Japan, she used many pen names in her lifetime."

Blyth and Miyamori both give the poem under her later name, Chiyo-ni 千代尼.

2) 手折らるゝ (taoraruru) is from the verb 手折る (taoru) meaning "(1) to break by hand (e.g. a flower); to break off (a twig); to pluck (a flower, a bud); (2) to make a young woman one's own thing".

3) 人 (hito) means "person" and not necessarily a "man". Japanese is most often gender neutral. And, conveniently, ambiguous.

4) 梅の花 (ume no hana) is commonly translated as "plum blossoms". 梅 (ume) meaning "plum; Japanese apricot; prunus mume" and 花 (hana). As an interesting side note, the botanical name is "prunus mume" and, at one point, ume was read mume.