Why should I lament
this parting of our two ways?
The pass I go through
is a place my forebears crossed,
a trace left from long ago
- Meaning
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Why should I lament this parting of ways? The barrier I am to cross is one my forebears crossed, a trace left from long ago.
- Commentary
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Volume Five: The Fuji River
To the robes and the poem the lady sent, Tadanori answered at once with this.
The tale remarks that in speaking of a barrier as a trace from long ago he was perhaps recalling how his ancestor Taira no Sadamori went east with Tawara Tōta Hidesato to put down Masakado; it sounded very graceful, it says.
The reality of the departure was not graceful. In former times a general going out against enemies of the court first entered the palace and received the sword of command; the emperor came out to the south hall, the nobles took their places, and a formal banquet was held. But the precedents of the Jōhei and Tengyō eras were held too old to follow, and this time, on the model of Taira no Masamori's departure for Izumo against Minamoto no Yoshichika, only a bell was given, put into a leather bag and hung around the neck of a menial.
And at the Fuji River the great Taira army, mistaking the beating of waterfowl's wings for a Minamoto night attack, fled without fighting at all.
She lamented the parting; he answers that there is nothing to lament, because the barrier ahead is one his forebears passed.
He consoles her by resetting a private parting inside the history of a house. Sadamori put down Masakado; I too go against enemies of the court. The pride of a man born to a warrior family is here.
But the reader knows what follows. Sadamori's descendants will run from the sound of waterfowl, and Tadanori himself will be killed in Volume Nine. A poem that rests on "a trace from long ago" leads directly to an ending unlike anything of long ago. Immediately after praising the verse as graceful, the tale sets down the shabby departure with a bell around a servant's neck; the gap between the praise and the fact is itself the measure of the Taira's decline.
wakareji……the parting of ways; separation.
nani ka nagekan……why should I lament?
seki……a barrier station on the road east.
mukashi no ato……the traces left by one's forebears.
Sadamori……Taira no Sadamori, who destroyed Masakado; Tadanori's ancestor.
Hidesato……Fujiwara no Hidesato, who fought beside Sadamori.
setto……the sword of command bestowed on a departing general.
zōshiki……a menial servant.
Jōhei, Tengyō……the eras of the risings of Masakado and Sumitomo.
- Source
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Heike Monogatari
- Other
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