Bright as the dawn moon
over the Akashi shore,
and in the sea wind
only the waves seemed to come
drawing near, like night itself
- Meaning
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The dawn moon left the Akashi shore bright, and in that sea wind the only thing that seemed like night was the waves drawing near.
- Commentary
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Volume One: The Night Attack in the Palace
Volume One of the Tale of the Heike opens with the origins of the Taira line. The story begins to move when Taira no Tadamori, rewarded for building a thirty-three-bay hall for the Retired Emperor Toba, is granted the province of Tajima and, at last, admission to the imperial presence.
The nobles were not pleased. That a rustic warrior from Ise should stand among the courtiers seemed intolerable, and a plan was laid to cut him down in the dark on the night of the Toyoakari banquet. Warned in advance, Tadamori came to the palace carrying a wooden sword faced with silver foil, and drew it deliberately in the lamplight so that his enemies drew back. His retainer Taira no Iesada waited in the garden in armor beneath his robe, and the plot came to nothing. When the nobles later brought a complaint, Tadamori produced the false blade, and the Retired Emperor, impressed by the warrior's foresight, let the matter drop.
To this account the tale adds two anecdotes about Tadamori's refinement. In the first, he had come up to the capital from Bizen, and the Retired Emperor asked him what the Akashi shore had been like. This poem was his answer.
The Retired Emperor was moved by it, and the poem was later taken into the Kin'yōshū, an imperially commissioned anthology. That a warrior could also compose is offered as part of what lay behind his admission to the palace.
The poem turns on two puns: Akashi, the place name, also means "bright," and yoru means both "to draw near" and "night."
The dawn moon has left the sky already light. Even so, in the wind off the shore, the only thing that seemed like night was the waves coming in. Brightness and night are held together in a single verse. The place name calls up the brightness, and that brightness cancels the night; the whole poem is built on that one word.
Against the view of Tadamori as a warrior and nothing more, this is what the tale offers first. Together with the poem that follows, it establishes that he could hold his own in the world of verse.
ariake no tsuki……the moon still in the sky after daybreak.
Akashi……a famous poetic place in Harima province; puns on akashi, "bright."
urakaze……the wind off a shore.
yoru……puns on "to draw near" and "night."
mieshika……so it appeared.
Kin'yōshū……the fifth imperial poetry anthology, compiled by Minamoto no Toshiyori.
Toyoakari no sechie……the court banquet held the day after the Niiname harvest festival.
shōden……permission to enter the courtiers' hall of the Seiryōden.
- Source
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Heike Monogatari
- Other
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