The foot of the oak
I had trusted for the shade
I might turn aside
to has become, I find now,
an empty seat and nothing
- Meaning
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The foot of the oak I trusted for the shade I might turn aside to has become an empty seat.
- Commentary
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Part Three: Shiigamoto
Kaoru murmured this at Uji when he came upon the room the Eighth Prince had used. The man he had looked to as his teacher in religion was gone, and the seat stood empty. The poem gives the chapter its name, Shiigamoto, and is the best known of its twenty-one.
Shii ga moto is the foot of an evergreen oak, a figure for shade one may shelter under. The poem leans on a verse in the Utsuho monogatari about the foot of an oak on a mountain where a lay ascetic performs his devotions, and lays that ascetic over the Eighth Prince, who lived in the hills under vows without leaving the world. Toko is both a seat and a bed, and munashi says in one word the emptiness of a room without its master. All Kaoru's helplessness at losing the one he relied on is gathered into a tree and a seat.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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