Thoughts from Episode 17: Remember that time when…?

I’m back after a little pause while I attended the 2025 BAJS conference last week! I enjoyed getting a chance to present on some of the interesting aspects of Saito’s adaptation, including touching on topics that I’ve explored on the blog. I also got to hear many other interesting talks about everything from Genji-inspired kimono patterns to evil smart houses. And if you happen to be reading this after having been at my talk, thank you!

Now, returning to Torikae baya, Episode 17 sees Sara go to the home of his wetnurse Aguri, filled with regret. After looking all over the capital for Sara, Tsuwabuki shows up, but Aguri throws him out once she realises that he’s involved with both Shi no Hime and Sara.

Meanwhile at court, there are concerns about flooding of the Kamogawa during the autumn typhoons, and mockery of Togu’s efforts to help. When talk turns to Togu’s naishi no kami Suiren, old man Fujiwara (remember him? he's a priest now!) hints heavily that the Emperor should have her become one of his women – annoying both Marumitsu and Kakumitsu for separate reasons. Just as the Emperor then enquires about the absent Sara, they spot an extremely unseasonal blooming cherry branch. He sends the branch to Sara, who has been at Aguri’s house all this time sending cold replies to Tsuwabuki’s constant letters. The Emperor’s gift inspires Sara to return to the palace, and his smart suggestions earn him a new responsibility to deal with the river problem.

Sara is surprised to see Aguri handing him a blooming cherry branch with a letter.

Panel from volume 4, page 67. ©Chiho Saito／Shogakukan

Something we see a lot of in this chapter is callbacks to moments from earlier in the story. One of these is right in the title: 野分の桜 (nowaki no sakura). Here we have the word nowaki, referring to a typhoon, particularly in the early autumn. This word came up back in Episode 12, when – during the spring – Shi no Hime compared Sara’s gentle demeanour to spring sunlight and Tsuwabuki’s passion to a nowaki. The title of Episode 17 once again juxtaposes nowaki with an image of spring, but the out-of-season reference is reversed: while Tsuwabuki was like a nowaki in spring, the Emperor sends Sara a blooming cherry branch in autumn.

Incidentally, this chapter title was a bit of a tricky one to translate. I would expect readers to know what a typhoon is, but it’s relevant to the setting (and the callback to Episode 12) that the title uses a more archaic term that’s specifically associated with autumn. And that’s a lot of information to try and convey when the original title is very short in Japanese – especially if you opt for “cherry blossom” which is already two words. The translation I’ve ended up with, at least for now, is “Autumn Blooms”. This actually omits both of the specific nouns to emphasise the seasonal contrast instead, but I like that it’s short and that it can be read both as modifier-noun (meaning “blooms in autumn”) or as noun-verb (meaning “autumn is blooming”).

Another callback comes in the message the Emperor sends along with the branch. He sends the miraculous unseasonal flowers to Sara, whom he says “waits on a miracle”. This calls back to Episode 15, where the Emperor refers all the way back to Episode 3. He remembers that Sara went to confront the eclipse in order to break a curse, and that according to Sara, the curse has still not been lifted. This has the effect of reminding readers of the tengu’s curse that supposedly afflicts Sara – and in the story, it acts as encouragement to Sara to take control of his life instead of waiting for fate to take its course.

And one last point I want to bring up is the poems that Sara and Tsuwabuki exchange by letter. As I discussed several weeks ago, there are many poems in the manga that come directly from the original Torikaebaya monogatari. Here, there are several poems from the equivalent point in the original story, with Tsuwabuki insisting that he’s so worried he could die, and Sara questioning his seriousness. Finally, just like his counterpart in Torikaebaya monogatari, Sara sends this poem:

まして思え 世に類なき身の 憂さに 嘆き乱るる ほどの心を

(私の心のことも少しは考えてみてください 世に例のない身になった辛さに嘆き乱れる私の心も)

The wording calls back to one of the poems I mentioned in that earlier post, where Sara expresses his sadness to Tsuwabuki in Episode 4. In that poem, he says that he suffers in a way that can’t compare to others, and in my translation I used the phrase “my singularly wretched existence”. So of course, wanting to reflect this reference, I included that phrase again when translating the Episode 17 poem:

"Consider something worse: a singularly wretched existence and a heart wracked with woe."

(Think for a moment about how it feels for me. In my heart, I constantly lament the pain of being unlike anyone else in the world.)

Given the way that these two poems link to each other in the original story, it makes sense that Saito wanted to preserve them both in the adaptation – and I hope I made that connection clear too!