Kage to nomi mizu no shita nite aimiredo tama naki kara wa kai nakarikeri

English Translation

Only her shape, and
under the water at that
we met and saw her —
and a body with no soul
in it was of no use to us

Meaning

Only her shape, and under the water at that, was what we met and saw; and a body with no soul in it was of no use at all.

Commentary

147 The River of Ikuta

Long ago there was a woman living in the province of Tsu. Two men courted her: one of the same province, of the Ubara family, and one from Izumi, of the Chinu family. In age, in looks, in bearing and in character they were exactly alike. She meant to give herself to whichever loved her more, and they loved her exactly alike. At dusk both came; when they sent gifts, the gifts were the same. Neither could be said to be the better, and she was at a loss. Her parents said that if she chose one the other's hopes would end; she answered that it was because their feelings were so exactly alike that she was troubled. They had set up an awning by the river Ikuta, and there her parents called the two men and said that the matter should be settled that day: let them shoot at the waterfowl swimming on the river, and whichever hit it should have the daughter. They shot; one pierced the bird's head, the other its tail. Since neither could be declared the winner, the girl in her distress composed a poem and, the awning standing over the water, threw herself in. While her parents were crying out, both suitors leapt in after her; one seized her foot and one her hand, and so all three died. The parents wept and buried them. When the men's graves were being made beside the girl's, the father of the Tsu man objected that his own son, of that province, should lie beside her, and that a man of another province had no business defiling its soil; so the father of the Izumi man brought earth from Izumi by boat and buried his son in that. And so, with the woman's grave in the middle, the two men's graves stand to left and right to this day.
All this, which had happened long ago, was painted in pictures and given to the late empress; and a company assembled and composed poems on the old story, speaking in the persons of the dead. Ise, the Lady of the Bedchamber, the First Princess, the empress herself, the Lady of the Palace Guards and the Superintendent of the Weaving Office each took the part of one of the three, and the ten poems that follow are theirs.
As for the man who had composed poems: his people cut lengths of bamboo with long joints for a fence, and buried with him a hunting robe, a skirt, a cap and a belt, and a bow, a quiver and a sword. The other man's parents, being perhaps careless, buried nothing of the kind with him. The graves are now called the Maiden's Mound. A traveller once took lodging near them, and hearing the sound of men fighting sent his servant to look; the servant returned saying there was nothing. As he slept, a man covered in blood knelt before him and said that he was hard pressed by his enemy and asked the loan of what hung at the traveller's waist, that he might have his revenge. Afraid as he was, the traveller lent it. When he woke the sword was gone, and presently the sound of fighting came again. After a while the man returned, saying that thanks to him he had killed the enemy he had hated for years and would serve him ever after as his guardian spirit; and he told the story from the beginning. By dawn no one was there; and going out in the morning the traveller found blood flowing at the foot of the mound, and blood on the sword he had lent. That is the whole of the section.
The two suitors were the Ubara man of Tsu and the Chinu man of Izumi. The river Ikuta flows through what is now Kobe, in Settsu. Of the company at the poem-making, Ise is the woman poet of the first section, one of the thirty-six poetic immortals; the First Princess was an imperial daughter; the empress was the consort of Emperor Uda; the Lady of the Palace Guards and the Superintendent of the Weaving Office were women in court service. The Maiden's Mound is the name of the three graves together.
The setting is the poem-making at the empress's residence, where the old story of Ikuta had been given in pictures and the company composed in the persons of the dead.
What prompted the poem was those pictures and that story. It is the first of the ten, spoken by Ise in the person of one of the men.
A poem in the woman's person follows, and the sequence of ten opens out from here.

The first word means only her form; it is the word used of a shape, a shadow, a thing without substance.
Seeing her under the water is the moment of seizing her body in the river, set down as it happened.
What he holds is a corpse with no soul in it.
The word that closes carries both use or profit and a seashell, adding the sound of a shell to an underwater scene while stating that it was no use. To have reached her and not reached her: from this single recognition the nine poems that follow proceed.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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