Until you had shaved
your head I bore you a grudge—
but now that you have
entered the true way at last,
I find that I am gladdened
- Meaning
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Until you shaved your head I bore a grudge; but now that you have entered the true way, I find I am glad.
- Commentary
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Volume Ten: Yokobue
Takiguchi the lay monk had been a warrior in Shigemori's service named Saitō Tokiyori. He had loved a woman called Yokobue deeply; reproved by his father, he took vows and entered the Ōjō-in at Saga. Yokobue heard of it and found the place. Looking through a gap in the door, he saw her standing there, unchanged and dear to him. Tormented as he was, his resolve held: there is no such person here, he said—surely you are mistaken. Yokobue, who had been waiting for his face to appear at the gate, let her head fall at the words of an unfriendly stranger. There was nothing more she could say. Watching her go down the mountain path with her head bowed, he several times almost cried out, and held it back with his fists clenched.
Afterward he told the monks he lived with: this place is quiet beyond anything, and I had thought it perfect for spending my days in the nembutsu; but now that a woman I once loved knows where I am—I sent her away firmly once, but at a second time and a third, being no stone, I might be drawn back into the old feeling. This time I mean to go deeper, where no one knows. He took his leave and entered the Shōjōshin-in on Mount Kōya.
Yokobue, abandoned, decided she had no further use for the world and took vows as a nun. Takiguchi heard of it privately and was moved after all. He sent her this poem.
Azusayumi, the catalpa bow, is a fixed epithet introducing soru, "to bend," and hence "to shave." The vocabulary of weapons introduces the vocabulary of renunciation. A man who was once a warrior uses a warrior's epithet to write about taking vows.
What it says is that until the head was shaved he bore a grudge. Most naturally the grudge is hers; it can also be read as his own. Either way, once it is shaved, he is glad.
He turned her away, and hearing that she has become a nun he says he is glad. The tale does not reproach him for it: entering the true way is ranked above feeling for another person.
Takiguchi will meet Koremori again later in this volume, help him take vows, and encourage him when he hesitates before drowning himself. The man who gave up a love guides the man who gives up a family.
soru……to shave the head; punning on "to bend," which belongs to the bow.
uramishi……bore a grudge.
azusayumi……a bow of catalpa; a fixed epithet introducing "to bend" and "to draw."
makoto no michi……the true way; the Buddha's path.
iru zo ureshiki……I am glad that you have entered it.
Ōjō-in……a temple at Saga.
Shōjōshin-in……a subtemple on Mount Kōya.
hosshin……to conceive the aspiration to enlightenment.
nembutsu zanmai……unbroken recitation of the Buddha's name.
Komatsu-dono……Taira no Shigemori.
- Source
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Heike Monogatari
- Other
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