Tadakiyo rode
off on a horse of flight-brown—
no use, Kazusa,
in strapping on the crupper
when all the beast does is run
- Meaning
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Tadakiyo rode off on a horse of flight-brown. No use, Kazusa, in strapping on the crupper when all the beast does is run.
- Commentary
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Volume Five: The Gosechi Dances
This is the second lampoon naming Tadakiyo and the last of the four on the rout at the Fuji.
With these four set down, the chapter turns to the new capital. On the thirteenth of the eleventh month a palace was finished at Fukuhara and the emperor moved into it; but the new capital had no Daigokuden, no Seishodō, no Burakuin, so the great thanksgiving rite due in the year of an accession could not be held, and it was decided that only the ordinary harvest rite and the Gosechi dances would take place. Even that harvest rite was in the end performed at the Bureau of Rites in the old capital.
Nige puns on "flight" and on kage, a bay coat. Was the horse a bay, or a horse of flight?
Shirigai is the crupper, the strap passed around a horse's hindquarters to keep the saddle from sliding forward. It is a device for supporting forward movement; on a horse that only runs away it is of no use. Kainashi means "of no avail," and carries the sound of kai in the harness vocabulary as well.
The verse is assembled out of nothing but the names of horse tack, exactly as the earlier one was assembled out of the parts of a house. A warrior is described entirely in the language of armor and harness. Granting him not one word proper to a person is the common method of mockery in this group of lampoons.
After these four, Volume Five closes with the hurried return from Fukuhara and with Shigehira's burning of Nara. After the laughter of the post-station women and the wit of the lampoons comes the scene of seventeen hundred people burning to death on the upper floor of the Great Buddha Hall. The latter half of the volume drops straight from laughter into fire.
nige……puns on "flight" and kage, a bay horse.
noritegeru……has gone and mounted.
Kazusa……Tadakiyo, Governor of Kazusa.
shirigai……the crupper, strapped round a horse's hindquarters.
kainashi……of no avail.
Daijōe……the great thanksgiving rite of an emperor's accession year.
Niinamee……the rite at which the emperor offers the new grain.
Gosechi……the dances performed in connection with that rite.
Jingikan……the office in charge of court ritual.
- Source
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Heike Monogatari
- Other
-
-
Faster than water
leaping the rocks in the shoals
of the Fuji stream,
down they came falling—these men,
these Taira out of Ise
-
Your armor is gone,
left behind at the Fuji—
then, Tadakiyo,
just put on the ink-dyed robe
and wear it for the next world
-
His progress, which I
so often watched—today, when
I ask where it goes,
they tell me it is a road
from which he will not return
-
Though I hid it, still
my love has come out into
my face, so that now
people ask me whether I
am brooding over something