To turn and cast off
the capital of flowers
for a windswept plain—
what lies at the end of it
is surely a thing to fear
- Meaning
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To turn away from the capital of flowers for a plain where the wind blows—what lies at the end of that is surely to be feared.
- Commentary
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Volume Five: The Moving of the Capital
This is the second of the two poems found written on a pillar of the old palace.
The capital had been a place kept safe by its guardian deities, with temples of proven power ranged north and south, and the eight highways of the home provinces and the seven circuits opening out from it; ordinary people had gone about their work there in peace. Within half a year it was becoming a ruin.
The new capital lay high against the mountains to the north and dropped away to the sea in the south. The noise of waves never stopped and the salt wind was harsh. The retired emperor Takakura fell steadily into ill health, and in the twelfth month of that year, with temples and shrines all protesting, the court moved abruptly back.
Kaze fuku hara, "the plain where the wind blows," puns on Fukuhara. There is only the one pun, and the structure is the clearer for it.
The frame is the opposition of a capital of flowers and a windy plain. To abandon flowers in bloom for a plain swept by wind—and flowers are what wind scatters. To walk into the wind of one's own accord is to walk into one's own ruin. The poem uses the sound of a place name and arrives at what moving there means.
Sue zo ayauki: the end of it is precarious. From the year this was written to the Taira's flight from the capital is three years.
Where the first poem takes time as its axis, this one takes place. Four hundred years, and a capital against a plain: the removal is judged from both sides. Two people whose names are not recorded wrote them on one pillar.
sakiizuru……coming into bloom.
hana no miyako……the capital of flowers; Heian-kyō.
furisutete……casting away, turning one's back on.
kaze fuku hara……a plain where the wind blows; puns on Fukuhara.
sue……what comes at the end; the future.
ayauki……precarious, to be feared.
goki shichidō……the five home provinces and seven circuits; the whole country.
iraka……the ridge of a roof.
- Source
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Heike Monogatari
- Other
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