Sing out even once,
cuckoo, and remember then
that night long ago
in the ancient wood whose name
is the word for growing old
- Meaning
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Sing out even once, cuckoo, and remember that night long ago in the wood of Oiso, whose name is the word for growing old.
- Commentary
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Volume Eight: The Progress to the Mountain
After the Taira fled the capital, the cloistered emperor had to set a new sovereign on the throne. Retired Emperor Takakura had left many sons. Nobutaka, whose daughter had borne several of them, had out of deference to the Taira and the empress not treated the boys with much ceremony; hearing of this, Kiyomori's widow, the Nii-dono, said it was no matter—she would raise one herself and make him crown prince—and brought him up carefully, with a nurse of her own choosing. That was the Fourth Prince.
The prince had been placed in the household of Nōen, superintendent of Hosshō-ji and the Nii-dono's brother. When the Taira left, Nōen went west, leaving his wife and the prince behind. Not long after, a messenger came from him telling her to bring the prince and join him. Delighted, she made her preparations and set out with the boy, and had reached Nishi-Shichijō when her own brother, Norimitsu, Governor of Kii, stopped her by main force. Are you out of your mind, he said; this prince's fortune is on the point of opening, and you would do such a thing?
The very next day a summons came for the prince from the cloistered emperor. Events have a course laid down for them; but if any man is to be credited with guarding this prince's fortune, it is Norimitsu. And yet the prince seems not to have kept his loyalty in mind, for the months went by without any acknowledgment.
At length Norimitsu composed two poems on the chance that they might be seen, and left them as anonymous verses in the palace. This is the first.
Oiso no mori is a poetic place in Ōmi, and its name carries the sound of oi, "growing old." The cuckoo, which calls once and passes on, is a bird to which memory has long been entrusted in poetry.
What Norimitsu asks for is not reward but to be remembered. The poem is addressed to a cuckoo and is in fact addressed to the prince: remember the night I stopped you at Nishi-Shichijō.
The anonymous form does real work here. He throws the poem into the palace without giving his name. The lampoons of Volumes Four and Five were mockery; this one is a plea. It shows that the form was not only a weapon against authority.
The prince heard of it, said that not knowing had been his own foolishness, summoned Norimitsu, and at once raised him to the junior third rank.
hitokoe……a single call.
hototogisu……the cuckoo, which calls once and passes.
Oiso no mori……a poetic wood in Ōmi; its name puns on "growing old."
yowa……the middle of the night.
mukashi……the days that are past.
Shi no Miya……the fourth son of Retired Emperor Takakura, later Emperor Go-Toba.
Nōen……superintendent of Hosshō-ji, the prince's foster father.
yashinaigimi……a lord's child entrusted to another to raise.
rakusho……an anonymous poem or notice left where it will be found.
shōsanmi……the junior third rank, the level of a court noble.
- Source
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Heike Monogatari
- Other
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