More than on the sleeve
that parts the grasses of the
eastern road, the dew
falls and falls upon the sleeves
of one who does not set out
- Meaning
-
More than on the sleeve that parts the grasses of the eastern road, the dew falls on the sleeves of one who does not set out at all.
- Commentary
-
Volume Five: The Fuji River
Word came that Yoritomo had risen, and the Taira, meaning to strike before he could gather his forces, sent thirty thousand horse eastward under Koremori as commander and Tadanori as second.
Tadanori, Governor of Satsuma, had long been visiting a lady of imperial descent. Once when he came, a lady of high rank was there as a guest and talked on at length. The night deepened and still she did not go. Tadanori waited a while under the eaves and then, impatient, worked his fan roughly. At that the lady murmured gracefully, "the insects crying all across the field." He stopped using the fan at once and went home.
When he came again she asked why he had left off with the fan that night, and he said that since he had heard something about a din, he had stopped. Both were drawing on an old poem: what a din, the insects crying across the whole field—while I, who love you, say nothing at all. To her guest the lady was remarking that the insects were noisy; to Tadanori she was saying that she kept her feeling unspoken.
When that lady heard he was going to the front, she sent him a set of robes, and with them, in the sorrow of a parting of a thousand leagues, this poem.
The sleeve that parts the grasses of the east is wet with the dew of those grasses—actual dew. What falls on the sleeve of one who does not travel is the dew of tears. A single word joins the dew of the road to the weeping of the one left behind.
"The sleeve that parts" and "the sleeve that does not set out" are set against each other: the one who moves and the one who stays, the one who goes out and the one who remains. And it is the one who remains, she says, who is the wetter. In the guise of concern for the traveler she states the depth of her own grief.
This exchange leads on to Volume Seven, where Tadanori entrusts a scroll of his poems to Fujiwara no Shunzei. He is the one member of the Taira who lived most for poetry, and his verse first enters the tale as an answer to a poem a woman sent him.
azumaji……the road east; the Tōkaidō.
kusaba wo waken……will part the grasses in going.
tatanu……who does not set out.
tamoto……a sleeve.
tsuyu……dew, overlaid with tears.
miyabara……born of a woman of the imperial house.
kosode……a robe with narrow wrist openings.
chisato no nagori……a parting across a thousand leagues.
nomose……all across the field.
- Source
-
Heike Monogatari
- Other
-