Furusato no tabine no yume ni mietsuru wa urami ya suramu mata to towaneba

English Translation

Those from my old home
who visit my traveller's sleep
do they bear me ill
resentment, since I have not
come to visit them again

Meaning

Are the people of the capital appearing in my dreams on the road because they hold it against me? I have never once gone back to see them since.

Commentary

2 A Dream in Travellers' Sleep

The emperor gave up the throne, and in the autumn of the following year he shaved his head, took orders, and travelled among the mountains. Tachibana no Yoshitoshi, a third-rank provincial official of Bizen, had served in the emperor's presence at court; when the emperor took orders, he shaved his head too and joined the party without telling anyone where he was going, staying constantly at his side. The court held that such secret travelling would not do, and sent word that officers of the Guards should be assigned as escort; but the emperor went on without any official attendants. One night they stayed at a place called Hine in Izumi province. The emperor looked so forlorn that those in attendance felt the sadness of it. Then came his command to make a poem on the word Hine, and this is the poem Yoshitoshi made. Everyone wept, and no one else could compose. This Yoshitoshi was afterwards known as the holy man Kanren, and stayed in the emperor's service for many years.
Yoshitoshi held the third rank in the provincial administration of Bizen and had been permitted to attend on the emperor at court. After taking orders he was known as Kanren, and had a reputation as a master of the game of go.
The abdication was in the ninth year of Kanpyō and the taking of orders in the autumn of the second year of Shōtai. Hine lay in the Hine district of Izumi, on the road towards Kumano and Kōya.
What prompted the poem was the emperor's command to compose on the word Hine.
When it was done, everyone in attendance wept, and not one of them could produce a poem of his own. The section closes with that scene and with the name Yoshitoshi bore in later years.

The place name Hine is folded into the word for sleeping away from home, and that is how the poem answers the command it was given.
The opening asks about people of the capital appearing in his dreams on the road. The word for old home here does not mean the province of one's birth but simply a place one used to live, and it points to the capital.
The third line puts the resentment as a supposition, and the last line supplies the grievance: he has never once gone back to see them. Its grammar marks a cause, so that the poem has to be read back from the end for its sense to close.
But anyone listening would have heard in it the situation of the master and servant themselves, wandering the mountains far from the city. That the company wept and could compose nothing further is the sign that they heard it.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

Other