Rather than sitting
alone and grieving, I should
have looked on it thus—
the shore, laid out like this, where
the fisherfolk make their home

Meaning

Rather than sitting alone and grieving, I should have looked on it like this—the shore where the fisherfolk live, laid out before me.

Commentary

Part One: Eawase

　Before the contest in the Emperor's presence, Genji had the cabinets of old and new paintings opened and, with Murasaki no Ue, chose what to send. He took out too the box of the travel diary he had painted at Suma and Akashi, and showed it to her for the first time. The pictures could move even those who knew nothing to tears, and the two who remembered those days recalled them with fresh grief. When she reproached him for never having shown them, he spoke this poem. She answered.

　"Hitori ite" is remaining alone, her life in the capital while he was at Suma. "The shore where the fisherfolk live" is Suma and Akashi. "To look on it thus" is to see it now in pictures. "Bekari keru" laments what would have been better. The exchange sets the real grief of that parting against reliving it now through pictures, and the role the diary plays in this chapter is shown in the poem.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

Rather than sitting alone and grieving, I should have looked on it thus— the shore, laid out like this, where the fisherfolk make their home

Rather than sitting
alone and grieving, I should
have looked on it thus—
the shore, laid out like this, where
the fisherfolk make their home