We who never got
so much as one strip of that
thin-drawn silk are still
counted in among the ones
who wear a thin coat of shame
- Meaning
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We who never got so much as a single strip of that thin-drawn silk are counted all the same among those wearing a thin coat of shame.
- Commentary
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Volume Four: The Letter to Nara
A lampoon had been left over the division of Kiyomori's three thousand bolts of thin silk, mocking the mountain monks whose robes were too thin to cover their shame. This verse is said to be the answer of monks who got none of the silk at all. The text records it at one remove: perhaps composed, it says, by monks who never came near the silk.
One lampoon and its reply stand together, and there the chapter turns to Kōfuku-ji's letter to Mii-dera. Where Hiei was silenced by silk, Nara denounced Kiyomori to his face. The contrast between the two houses is sharpened by the arrangement.
It picks up "could not cover the shame" from the first poem and answers with "wearing a thin shame." Kaku carries both "to incur" shame and "to cover," taking over the earlier verse's verb directly.
The argument runs: having received not one strip, we should have no share of the shame either. Yet we are lumped in with the mountain monks, so the silk was not distributed equally but the shame was. Those left out of the division receive their portion of disgrace and nothing else.
Answering a lampoon with a lampoon repeats the pattern of Volume One, where a placard set up in the ruins of Kiyomizu-dera was answered by another the next day. But that exchange was about the efficacy of the Buddha's law; this one is self-mockery about silk. Three years or so tell where the language of these monks has come to rest.
orinobe……thin-drawn silk.
hitokire……one strip; a measure of cloth.
warera sae……even we.
usuhaji……a thin shame, taking up the thinness of the silk.
kaku……to incur, with an overtone of to cover.
kazu ni iru……to be counted among them.
shuto……the body of monks belonging to a temple.
Jōkai……Kiyomori's name in religion.
- Source
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Heike Monogatari
- Other
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