Since this is Ari—
a name that says regret still
remains at parting—
the god must be sending down
his grace in these white breakers
- Meaning
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Since this is the Bay of Ari, whose very name says regret remains at parting, the god must be casting his grace over us in these white breakers.
- Commentary
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Volume Four: The Return
On the twenty-ninth of the third month the Retired Emperor's boat was decked out for the return. But the wind was fierce, so the boat was rowed back and he stayed within Itsukushima, at the Bay of Ari.
Held there, he commanded: compose a poem in farewell to the great deity. The Lesser Captain Takafusa answered with this verse.
From about midnight the waves quieted and the wind fell, and the boat put out; that day they reached the harbor of Shikina in Bingo. At that place stood a residence built by the provincial governor Fujiwara no Tamenari when the cloistered emperor had once made a progress there, and Kiyomori had fitted it out as a resting place—but the Retired Emperor did not go up into it.
The inconvenience of being unable to depart is reread as the god's own hand holding them back. Takafusa takes the topic he was given—compose in farewell—and turns the very fact of the delay into evidence of that farewell's weight.
The technique is a doubled pun. Ari, the name of the bay, also says "there is"—there is regret. And kakuru, to cast grace over someone, is also what a white wave does when it breaks over something. Place name, weather, and divine intention are held together by two puns. For a verse composed on the spot as entertainment, nothing in it strains.
Takafusa was married to a daughter of Kiyomori, and appears again in Volume Six as the amorous captain who visits Kogō. He shows himself twice in the Tale of the Heike, both times as a man who can compose.
tachikaeru……to return; tatsu, "to rise," also belongs to waves.
nagori……regret at parting.
Ari no ura……the landing place at Itsukushima; ari also means "there is."
megumi wo kakuru……to bestow grace; kakaru is what a breaking wave does.
shiranami……white breakers.
daimyōjin……the great deity of Itsukushima.
Takafusa……Fujiwara no Takafusa, son-in-law of Kiyomori; in fact a Middle rather than Lesser Captain.
Shikina no tomari……a harbor in Bingo, in present-day Fukuyama, Hiroshima.
- Source
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Heike Monogatari
- Other
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