Shiogama no ura ni wa ama ya taenikemu nado sunadori no miyuru toki naki

English Translation

Has the fisher folk
of Shiogama's inlet
died out altogether
Why is it that there is now
no hour when one sees them fish

Meaning

Have the fisher folk of Shiogama bay died out? Why is there never an hour when one sees anyone at the fishing?

Commentary

58 Kurozuka

While Taira no Kanemori was in Michinoku, a man descended from the Kan'in prince was living at a place called Kurozuka, and Kanemori teased his daughters as country ogres, composing "Michinoku no Adachigahara no Kurozuka ni oni komoreri to kiku wa makoto ka" and the like. In time he asked for one of the daughters in marriage, but her father said only that she was still very young and that when the proper time came — . Kanemori had to return to the capital, and likening the girl to the yellow roses of Ide he composed "Hanazakari sugi mo ya suru to kawazu naku Ide no yamabuki ushirometashi mo". As for Kurozuka: there was a wife of Lord Tsunetada who worked the name of the hot spring called the Natori Bath into a poem, and she it was who was mistress of Kurozuka. When she composed "Ōzora no kumo no kayoiji mite shi kana tori nomi yukeba ato wa ka mo nashi", Kanemori heard it and composed in the same manner "Shiogama no ura ni wa ama ya taenikemu nado sunadori no miyuru toki naki". As for the girl on whom Kanemori had set his heart, what he had feared came to pass. She came up to the capital with another man; and Kanemori, not knowing it, wrote asking why she had not let him know she had come. She sent back the very poem he had made about the yellow roses of Ide, saying it was his present. Understanding at last that he had been refused, he composed "Toshi o hete nurewataritsuru koromode o kyō no namida ni kuchi ya shinuramu" and sent it. That is the whole of the section.
Taira no Kanemori is one of the thirty-six poetic immortals; he exchanges poems with the Lady of Hyōe in the fifty-sixth section and with the daughter of Taira no Nakaki in the fifty-seventh. The man at Kurozuka was a descendant of the Kan'in prince, and his daughters are the ones Kanemori teased. Of Lord Tsunetada's wife the prose says only that she was mistress of Kurozuka.
The setting is again Michinoku.
What prompted the poem was Kanemori's hearing the poem "Ōzora no kumo no kayoiji mite shi kana tori nomi yukeba ato wa ka mo nashi". He composed in the same manner, the prose says.
The section then returns to the girl on whom Kanemori had set his heart.

Shiogama bay was a place of poetic association in Michinoku, appearing with the smoke of salt-burning and the figures of fisher folk.
The second line supposes, in the past tense, that they have died out.
The closing asks why there is never an hour when anyone is seen at the fishing; the word covers both the catching of fish and those who catch them.
As the prose says, he composed in the same manner, and the construction is indeed the same. The other poem looks at the sky and finds no track of birds; this one looks at the sea and finds no fisher folk. Both are built on the absence of what should be there, and that correspondence is why the two stand together.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

Other