You who serve the shrine
of Toyooka-hime,
enthroned in heaven—
do not forget the sacred
rope my heart has drawn round you
- Meaning
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You who serve at the shrine of Toyooka-hime, enthroned in heaven, do not forget the sacred rope my heart has drawn about you—do not forget that I have claimed you.
- Commentary
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Part One: Otome
For the Gosechi dances that year Genji had chosen Koremitsu's daughter to send to the palace. Yugiri, sunk in gloom since he had been parted from Kumoinokari and unable even to read, wandered quietly about the Nijo house in the hope of distraction. The dancer had been helped from her carriage with great care and set to rest behind a screen hastily put up by the corner doors. Stealing near and looking in, he saw her leaning wearily against something. She seemed just the age of the girl he loved, a little taller, and if anything the handsomer. It was not that his heart had shifted; but he could not be still, and rustling the hem of his own robe to draw her notice, he addressed this poem to her. She had no idea who he was and found it eerie; then her attendants came up to see to her paint and there was a stir, and he went away with great reluctance.
"Ame ni masu" is enthroned in heaven. "Toyooka-hime" is a name for Amaterasu, and the poem draws on the kagura verse in the Shuishu, "These offerings are not mine, but offerings of the shrine of Toyooka-hime, enthroned in heaven." "Miyabito" is one who serves the god—here the Gosechi dancer he is addressing. "Shime" plays on the sacred rope that marks off holy ground and on "shimu," to claim as one's own, and it belongs to the imagery of the goddess. Borrowing the language of ritual to tell her that he has claimed her and she must not forget it is bold indeed. The words he added, "of the sacred fence," quote the old poem "since the long ages of the sacred fence of Furuyama, where the maiden waves her sleeve, I have loved you," and so declare that he has loved her from far back. The abruptness of this courtship has the youth of the man in the Tales of Ise, who loved with such headlong style.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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In color on color
I come to know how hard it is,
this lot of mine—
in what dye, then, was it steeped,
this robe that is our bond?
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Frost and ice have set
so bitterly, and the sky
in the dark of dawn
I darken further still with
these tears of mine, falling, falling
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The maiden also
has taken on years, it seems,
since those heavenly sleeves—
for the friend of that old world
has grown older himself now
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Say it that way, and
it seems a thing of today—
how, like frost that melts
in the sunlight, I softened
there against your sleeve of old