In the old days she
was one we likened to the
moon—and now there is
no light of her at all here
in this village of deep hills
- Meaning
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In the old days she was one we likened to the moon; and here in this village among the deep hills there is no light of her at all.
- Commentary
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The Initiates' Chapter: The Death of the Empress
After the empress had written her two poems on the sliding door, Sanesada, who was in the retinue, wrote this one on a pillar of the hut as the mood took him.
"The lady we likened to the moon" is the empress as she once was. That woman is now in a mountain village without light.
Sono hikari naki applies both to the absence of moonlight and to the absence of her old brilliance. A village deep in the hills where even moonlight does not reach becomes, in the same words, the condition of a person.
What is worth noting is who wrote it. In Volume Five, after the removal to Fukuhara, Sanesada went to see the moon in the ruined old capital and called on the Grand Empress at Konoe-gawara—Fujiwara no Tashi, the woman made consort to two reigns in Volume One. Now he calls on the empress at Ōhara.
Twice, then, this man visits a highly born woman in her ruin and composes on the moon: once in the autumn of the removal to Fukuhara, once after the destruction of the Taira. In the tale he carries the office of joining the moon to ruins.
Writing on a pillar is also a form the tale repeats: Giō's paper door, the pillar in an emptied cell, the pillar of a worship hall, the pillar of the palace. The last of them is a pillar in a hut at Ōhara.
inishie……long ago.
tsuki ni tatoeshi……whom we compared to the moon.
kimi……here, the empress.
sono hikari naki……without that light.
miyamabe……the edge of the deep mountains.
sato……a village.
Sanesada……Fujiwara no Sanesada, who appears in Volume Five.
gubu……accompanying in a retinue.
io……a poor hut.
aishōka……a poem of mourning.
- Source
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Heike Monogatari
- Other
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