That on a small isle
out in the Satsuma sea
I am still alive—
tell my parents, carry it,
wind across the eightfold tides
- Meaning
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That I am still alive on a small island out in the Satsuma sea—carry word of it to my parents, wind across the eightfold tides.
- Commentary
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Volume Two: The Floating of the Stupas
Heartened as he was by the oracle on the nagi leaves, Yasuyori could not bear his longing for home. For what comfort it might give, he made a thousand stupas, writing on each a Sanskrit character, the year, the month and day, and his signature—Taira no Hōgan Yasuyori—and then two poems. This is the first of them.
He carried the stupas down to the shore and, praying to the eight million gods, set them one by one on the returning waves.
One of the thousand drifted all the way to the shore at Itsukushima in Aki. A monk connected with Yasuyori had come there on pilgrimage and was quietly reciting sutras on a moonlit night when he made out the shape of a stupa among the weed washing in from the offing. He took it up and found Yasuyori's poem on it. Struck by the strangeness of it, he carried it back to the capital. From Yasuyori's family the stupa passed to the Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa, and by way of Shigemori it reached Kiyomori himself. Each in turn was moved, and it is from this that the eventual pardon follows.
The message is addressed to his parents, and the carrier entrusted with it is the sea wind. On an island where no human hand can be relied on, only wind and wave might deliver anything.
The whole wish of the poem gathers in three words: that I exist. He does not ask to be brought home, nor to be saved. He wants only for it to be known that he is alive. That it makes no demand at all is what makes it so urgent.
Yae, the eightfold of the tides, means layer upon layer, counting out the distance between the island and the capital. And across that distance the stupa did in fact reach Itsukushima. The poem is fulfilled inside the story—one of the clearest instances in the Tale of the Heike of a verse actually altering the course of events.
Satsumagata……the waters off Satsuma, where Kikai-ga-shima was held to lie.
kojima……the small island; Kikai-ga-shima.
ware ari to……that I am alive.
yae……in many layers, eightfold.
shiokaze……the wind off the sea.
sotoba……a long narrow board set up as a memorial offering.
bonji……the script used for writing Sanskrit.
Heihōgan……Yasuyori's title, from his post in the Imperial Police.
yaoyorozu no kami……the countless gods.
- Source
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Heike Monogatari
- Other
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