Waga tame ni tsuraki hito o ba okinagara nani no tsumi naki yo o ya uramimu

English Translation

Leaving aside the
one who has been hard on me
why should I lay blame
upon a world that has done
nothing whatever to me

Meaning

Leaving aside the one who has been hard on me, why should I lay any blame on a world that has done nothing at all?

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 the same period of exchanges between them.
The prose records nothing of what prompted it, saying only that on another occasion he composed this as well.
The section closes after it with the note that the woman, brought up with great care and intended for the emperor, was cast off after this affair. The poem was later included in the Shika-shū.

The opening names the one who has been hard on him: the person who deserves the grievance is identified first.
What follows means leaving that person aside, out of the reckoning.
The world he speaks of has committed no offence. Renouncing it, he says the fault is not the world's — a priest pointing out for himself the illogic of blaming it.
The closing question is rhetorical: why should he? He would not. What he resents is not the world but her. It is a poem in which a man in religion admits that the object of his grievance is a single woman.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

Other