Sumizome no Kurama no yama ni iru hito wa tadoru tadoru mo kaeri kinanamu

English Translation

You who went into
the dark of Kurama's hills
in your ink-dyed robe
come back to me — come groping
your way, if it must be so

Meaning

You who went into the dark of Kurama in your ink-dyed robe: come back to me, groping your way if you must.

Commentary

105 The Mountain of Kurama

When the daughter of Taira no Nakaki was possessed by a spirit and the priest Jōzō performed rites for her, people began to talk, for what passed between them did not look like an ordinary matter. They went on meeting in secret, and the talk grew unpleasant; and thinking he could not stay in the world any longer, Jōzō left it. He shut himself away on Mount Kurama at severe austerities, but the woman remained dear to him, and he practised with his mind turning towards the capital. One day, lying prostrate in his grief, he saw a letter close beside him. Wondering how a letter came to be there, he picked it up and read it, and it was from the woman he was thinking of: "Sumizome no Kurama no yama ni iru hito wa tadoru tadoru mo kaeri kinanamu". It was a strange thing, and he could not think who had brought it, nor was there anyone who could have; and it was so unaccountable that he went off alone, distracted, to her. Later, having returned to the mountain, he sent her "Karakushite omoiwasururu koishisa o utate nakitsuru uguisu no koe", and her reply was "Sate mo kimi wasurekerishika uguisu no naku ori nomi ya omoiizubeki". On another occasion he composed "Waga tame ni tsuraki hito o ba okinagara nani no tsumi naki yo o ya uramimu". The woman had been brought up with the greatest care, and though noblemen had courted her, her parents had kept her from them, intending her for the emperor; but after this she was cast off. That is the whole of the section.
Jōzō was a Tendai priest who appears in the sixty-second section, exchanging poems with the Lady Nōsan. Taira no Nakaki served as Assistant Governor of Ōmi; the fifty-seventh section tells of his daughter's fallen circumstances. Mount Kurama, north of the capital, was known as a place of austerities.
The setting is Mount Kurama, where Jōzō had shut himself away.
The prose records nothing of what prompted the poem. It appeared as a letter lying close beside him while he lay weeping, and the prose says no one could have brought it.
Reading it, and finding the thing beyond accounting for, he went off alone to her. From here the section moves to the exchanges after his return to the mountain. This poem was later included in the Gosen-shū.

The ink-dyed robe of the first line is a priest's habit, and it also draws the word for darkness out of the mountain's name that follows, so that the dye and the dark of the hills lie together.
The one who went into Kurama is Jōzō; the verb covers going into the mountains and entering religion alike.
The third line, its word doubled, means groping one's way — an uncertain, feeling progress. It is both a figure coming down a dark mountain and a licence to come back still in doubt.
The closing is a wish directed at him: come back. She does not tell him to abandon his practice, only to return. How the letter reached Kurama at all is the thing the prose is careful to leave unexplained.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

Other