Hikari idemu akatsuki chikaku narinikeri
ima zo mishi yo no yumegatari suru

English Translation

The dawn in which light
will come out is close at hand
now, and so at last
I tell you of the dream I
saw in the world I once knew

Meaning

The dawn in which the light will break is close at hand, and so at last I tell the dream I saw in the world I once knew.

Commentary

Part Two: Wakana Jo

　In the Third Month of the following year the Akashi Consort bore the Heir Apparent a son. For the Akashi family there could be no greater rise, and congratulations poured in from the capital. About then a letter came from the old man who had stayed behind on the Akashi shore. In it he set down the prophetic dream he had had before his daughter was born, and his joy that it had now come true. This poem came with the letter. It was the last word of him; he went off into the deep mountains, and nothing more of him is told. Reading it, the Akashi lady wept.

　"The dawn in which light will come out" is sunrise, and it points to the newborn child's future on the throne. "The dream I saw in the world I once knew" is the prophecy he had kept to himself for so many years. "At last" is emphatic: the time to speak has come. The family's fortune is set out as the movement of the heavens, and the man who saw it will go into the hills without seeing that dawn. Placed where it closes the Akashi story, the poem carries a great deal of weight.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

Hikari idemu akatsuki chikaku narinikeri ima zo mishi yo no yumegatari suru

Hikari idemu akatsuki chikaku narinikeri
ima zo mishi yo no yumegatari suru