When she asked, “Is it a white jewel?”—
had I but answered, “It is dew,” and vanished away.
- Meaning
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When she asked, “Is it a white jewel?” I should have answered, “It is dew,” and vanished away.
- Commentary
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Episode Six: "Is it a white jewel?"
A man had for many years pursued a woman who seemed far beyond his reach. One night he carried her off by force and fled with her.
As the night grew deep, thunder crashed and rain fell heavily, so they took refuge in a ruined storehouse without doors, and the man stood at the entrance with bow and arrows.
But a demon dwelled in the storehouse, and the woman was devoured. She cried out, yet the thunder was so fierce that the man could not hear.
At daybreak he lamented and wept at her disappearance, but there was nothing he could do.
On the way as they fled, by the bank of a river called Akutagawa, the woman had asked of the dew gathered on the grass leaves, “What is that?” The man, hurrying on and pressed by the worsening weather, had no leisure to reply. In this poem he expresses his regret that had he answered then, “It is dew,” and vanished away, he would not have suffered such grief.
From the fact that she had never even seen dew upon the grass, one glimpses her upbringing as a cherished daughter reared deep within a noble household.
A note adds that this tale reflects an event in which Lady Takako, later the Nijō Empress, when she was still a daughter of the Fujiwara before entering the court, was carried off by a man but retrieved by her two brothers; the "demon" is said to allude to this reality.
- Source
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Ise Monogatari
- Other
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