The poems in the text, slight and occasional as they are, depending
often for their charm on plays upon words of two meanings, or on
the suggestions conveyed to the Japanese mind by a single word,
have presented problems of great difficulty to the translators, not
perfectly overcome.
Izumi Shikibu's Diary is written with extreme delicacy of treatment.
English words and thought seem too downright a medium into which to
render these evanescent, half-expressed sentences and poems--vague as
the misty mountain scenery of her country, with no pronouns at all, and
without verb inflections. The shy reserve of the lady's written record
has induced the use of the third person as the best means of suggesting
it.
Of the "Sarashina Diary" there exist a few manuscript copies, and
three or four publications of the text. Some of them are confused and
unreadably incoherent. The present translation was done by comparing
all the texts accessible, and is especially founded on the connected
text by Mr. Sakine, professor of the Girls' Higher Normal School,
Tokio, published by Meiji Shoin, Itchome Nishiki-cho, Kanda-ku, Tokio.
As far as possible the exact meaning has been adhered to, and the
words chosen to express it have been kept absolutely simple, without
complexity of thought, for such is the vocabulary in which it was
written. Sometimes the diarist uses the present tense, sometimes the
text seems reminiscent. The words in square brackets have been inserted
by the translators to complete the sense in English of sentences
which literally rendered do not carry with them the suggestion of the
Japanese text.