Hitorine wa kimi mo shirinu ya tsurezure to
omoi Akashi no urasabishisa o

English Translation

Have you too come to
know what sleeping alone is—
how, with nothing to
do, she passes night away
in Akashi's lonely bay

Meaning

Have you too learned what it is to sleep alone—how, with nothing to do, she passes the nights in the loneliness of Akashi bay?

Commentary

Part One: Akashi

　Late in the night, when the shore wind had turned cool, the novice poured out everything he had held for years: eighteen years of trusting the Sumiyoshi god, prayers offered for his daughter alone, and the charge he had laid on her to go into the sea should he die first. He wept as he told it. When Genji answered that she might be a comfort in his lonely nights, the old man, shaking, spoke this poem. Genji replied.

　"Hitorine" is sleeping alone, meaning Genji's life in exile and his daughter's condition together. "Tsurezure" is having nothing to occupy one. "Omoi akashi" is passing a night in brooding, with the place-name Akashi inside it. "Urasabishi" is desolation of heart, with the word for bay in it. Weaving the place-name in twice, he draws his daughter's loneliness up against Genji's, and a father's design in raising the match shows in the very technique of the poem.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

Hitorine wa kimi mo shirinu ya tsurezure to omoi Akashi no urasabishisa o

Hitorine wa kimi mo shirinu ya tsurezure to
omoi Akashi no urasabishisa o