The catalpa bow
handed down from man to man
among warriors
is a thing that one draws—not
a thing one turns back again
- Meaning
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The catalpa bow handed down among warriors is a thing to be drawn, not a thing to be turned back.
- Commentary
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Volume Nine: The Second Charge
This is the battle at the Ikuta grove. The brothers Kawara Tarō and Jirō charged into the stockade ahead of the rest and were killed. When their heads were shown to the commander Tomomori, he said they were splendid men, that such warriors were worth a thousand apiece, and that it was a loss.
Kawara's retainers ran out shouting that the Kawara brothers had just charged in and died. Hearing it, Kajiwara Kagetoki called out: Kawara is dead, and the fault is our party's; now is the moment—in, and attack. His five hundred horse pulled away the barricade at Ikuta and rushed in with a shout.
Among them was Kajiwara's second son Kagetaka, who kept pressing forward alone. His father sent a messenger after him to say that the commander had ordered no reward for a man who charges before the rear ranks can follow. Kagetaka held his horse a moment, spoke this poem, and rode straight into the mass of the enemy.
His father went on shouting: do not let Kagetaka be killed, do not let him be killed, follow him. His elder brother Genta and younger brother Saburō went after him, and the five hundred Kajiwara horse went into the great army together like a squall.
Azusayumi, the catalpa bow, is an elevated word for a bow and introduces "to draw." A bow is drawn, not turned back—and onto that is laid a refusal to retreat.
Hiite carries both "drawing a bow" and "pulling back," and kaesu both "returning a bow" and "turning back." The whole case against retreat is assembled from the vocabulary of weapons.
Technically it is what the lampoons of Volume Five did, building a verse out of nothing but the parts of a house or a set of harness. But there the device served mockery of others; here it serves an account of one's own conduct. The same materials make a jeer or a resolution.
He answers his father's order with a poem, and having spoken it rides in. Nothing is elaborated; one verse does it. Of the poems composed in the middle of fighting in the Tale of the Heike, this is the briefest reply.
mononofu……a warrior.
toritsutaetaru……handed down through the generations.
azusayumi……a bow of catalpa wood; an elevated term introducing "to draw."
hiite……drawing a bow; also pulling back.
kaesu……returning a bow; also turning back.
sakamogi……a barricade of felled branches.
geji……an order.
kanjō……a reward for service.
Kajiwara Kagetoki……a commander on the Minamoto side.
Ikuta no mori……the grove in Settsu forming the eastern position at Ichi-no-tani.
- Source
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Heike Monogatari
- Other
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