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
- Meaning
-
That progress of his, which I watched so often—today, when I ask where it is bound, they tell me it is a road from which he will not return.
- Commentary
-
Volume Six: The Death of the New Retired Emperor
The first month of the fifth year of Jishō came. The palace kept a bleaker New Year than usual: after continual warfare no one had the heart for celebration, the ceremony of felicitations was canceled, the emperor did not appear, and even the customary banquet went unheld. A damp and gloomy air filled the palace and there was nothing festive anywhere in it. A sense of something impending had settled over people.
On the fifth, the leading monks of Nara were stripped of office. Most of the ordinary monks had already been shot down or cut down in the burning of the previous winter, and Tōdai-ji and Kōfuku-ji, with all their long history, were destroyed. Even so an order went out that the Misaie rites of the eighth through the fourteenth would be held as usual—though with the Nara clergy wiped out it was hard to assemble anyone. There was talk of using monks of the capital, but since it seemed wrong that not one man should come from Nara, in the end a lecturer named Jōhō was found in hiding at Kajū-ji, and the rites were carried through.
The retired emperor Takakura had been worn out in body and mind by two years of trouble. The confinement of his father at Toba, the death of Prince Mochihito, the removal of the capital to Fukuhara—such a run of calamities was more than a young man could carry. After he heard of the destruction of Tōdai-ji and Kōfuku-ji his health, never good, gave way altogether, and on the fourteenth of the first month he died, mourned for his virtue and his kindness. He was twenty-one.
The Hōin Chōken, watching the smoke of the new retired emperor's cremation, composed this poem.
Miyuki is the word for a retired emperor's going out. Chōken had watched Takakura's progresses many times while he lived. Today is another progress; but ask where it is going and the answer is that it does not return.
In its wording nothing distinguishes this from any other leave-taking. The same term is used and only the meaning has been exchanged. Calling the smoke of a pyre a progress is the whole of the poem.
Volume Six opens with Takakura's death, and the chapters that follow—the maples, Aoi-no-mae, Kogō—recall what kind of man he was. This poem stands at the head of that group and works almost as a preface to the three. The tale sends off an emperor dead at twenty-one first with a poem, and then looks back at him through three stories.
tsune ni mishi……that I always used to see.
miyuki……the going out of a retired emperor; here overlaid on the funeral procession.
kyō to eba……when I ask where it goes today.
kaeranu tabi……the journey from which there is no return.
Shin'in……the newly retired emperor; here Takakura.
Chōken Hōin……son of the lay monk Shinzei, famous as a preacher.
Misaie……a Buddhist rite held at court in the first month.
ikō……a rank of monk qualified to lecture at such rites.
haiga……the New Year ceremony of felicitation to the emperor.
- Source
-
Heike Monogatari
- Other
-