Japan Navigator

The lotus is my favorite flower and although the ponds are still empty in this early season, I happened to come across these lotus pictures when reorganizing my slides last weekend. They were taken in Hokongoin Temple in Kyoto, which boasts a fabulous lotus pond in summer.

[Lotus (Hokongoin Temple, Kyoto). Photo by Ad Blankestijn]

I searched for a poem to go with them and found the following one by Henjo, a 9th c. waka poet and Buddhist priest.

lotus leaves
have hearts
untouched by filth
yet somehow pretend
dewdrops are jewels

hachisuba no | nigori ni shimanu | kokoro mote | nanika wa tsuyu wo | tama to azamuku

Henjo plays with the notion of the purity of the lotus, that rises up from the mud in the pond but is untouched by it, and the dewdrops on the broad lotus leaves that are so beautiful they look like jewels - and jokes that such a counterfeit is unbecoming of the pure lotus!

[Lotus (Hokongoin Temple, Kyoto). Photo by Ad Blankestijn]

Henjo (816-890) is counted as one of the Thirty-six Poetry Immortals. He was the grandson of Emperor Kammu and started life as a courtier in the palace of Emperor Ninmyo. When Ninmyo died in 850, Henjo took the tonsure and became a priest of the then dominant Tendai school. In 877 he founded Gankeiji in Yamashina (Kyoto). In 885 he received the rank of Sojo (”Archbishop”) and was called Kazan Sojo (Gankeiji was also called Kazanji).

[Lotus (Hokongoin Temple, Kyoto). Photo by Ad Blankestijn]

For the rest, little is known about his life. Only 35 of his poems have been preserved (see some more in 2001 Waka, including a different translation of the present one) - they show him as a man of great wit, also in the poetic exchanges with Ono no Komachi.