八洲もる国つ御神も心あらば
飽かぬ別れの仲をことわれ
飽かぬ別れの仲をことわれ
- Roma-ji
-
Yashima moru kunitsumikami mo kokoro araba
akanu wakare no naka o kotoware - English Translation
-
If the land's own gods,
who keep the eight islands safe,
have hearts in them too,
let them judge between us in
a parting we have not willed
- Meaning
- If the gods of this land, who guard its eight islands, have hearts of their own, let them judge this parting neither of us wanted.
- Commentary
-
Part One: Sakaki
On the sixteenth of the ninth month the High Priestess performed her purification at the Katsura River and set out for the palace. As she left, the usual endless message came from Genji, tied to a strip of mulberry cloth, with this poem. Answers came back even in the bustle, the Priestess's written for her by a woman of her household. Genji held back from going to see them off, and passed the day in idle brooding at Nijo.
"Yashima" is the land of Japan and "moru" is to guard. "Kunitsukami" are the gods of the land, a choice fitted both to a journey to Ise and to the Priestess's office. "Kotowaru" is to declare what is right, to judge. Framing a plea about a parting as a case brought before the gods lets him carry private feeling into a public occasion while wrapping it in the language of the rites.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
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- A parting at dawn is always a thing of dew, but this—here is one such as the world has not known, and such an autumn sky too
- Even in itself a parting in autumn is a sad enough thing— do not add your crying to it, pine crickets of the field
- If the land's own gods are to judge between you two up there in the sky, then let them first look into the idle words you have said
- I would not call up those old days again today, and hold myself back, and yet within my own heart there is a sadness in it