Kaze fukeba okitsu shiranami Tatsutayama yowa ni ya kimi ga hitori koyuramu

English Translation

When the wind blows, white
breakers rise far out to sea —
and rising, Tatsuta:
is it that mountain you are
crossing alone at midnight

Meaning

When the wind blows, white breakers rise far out at sea — and rising, Tatsuta. Is it that mountain you are crossing alone at midnight?

Commentary

149 The Mountain of Tatsuta

Long ago a man and a woman lived in the district of Katsuragi in Yamato. The woman was beautiful in face and figure. They had loved one another for years and he had lived with her; but her family's fortunes fell very low, and troubled by this, though he loved her without measure, he took another wife. This new wife was a woman of means. He did not particularly love her, but when he went to her she did everything for him, and dressed handsomely. Coming back from that brilliant household to his first wife, he found her sitting in shabby poverty. Since she showed no jealousy when he went to the other, he was much moved. But in her heart she was jealous beyond measure and could not be easy, and she bore it. Even on nights when he meant to stay, she would say pointedly that he had better be going; and he began to wonder whether she had another man, since otherwise she would surely have reproached him. So, pretending to set out for the new wife, he hid among the garden trees to see whether a man would come; and the woman stood on the verandah, combing her hair by the fine moonlight. She did not sleep, but sighed heavily and gazed at the moon until late; and thinking she was waiting for a man, he watched, and she spoke this poem to her servant. Wondering whether it was for his own sake, he was filled with tenderness. The new wife's house lay along the road over Tatsuta mountain. Watching still, he saw her begin to weep and lie down where she was, and put water in a metal vessel and hold it to her breast. Wondering what she could be doing, he watched; and the water came to the boil. She threw out the boiling water and put in fresh. His heart overflowed, and he ran out and said, what must a person feel to come to this — and took her in his arms and stayed the night. After that he went nowhere else and stayed with her. Many months passed, and then it occurred to him that a woman's love, for all her calm face, was a desperate thing, and he grew anxious about how the new wife took his not coming, and went to her. Having stayed away so long, he stood outside diffidently and looked in; and where she had looked well when he was there, alone she wore whatever came to hand, with a great comb still stuck in her forelock, and was heaping rice into her own bowl. He thought it dreadful, went home, and never went again. This man was of the imperial house. That is the whole of the section.
Yamato is the modern Nara prefecture and Katsuragi its western district. Tatsuta mountain lies on the road from Yamato into Kawachi. Neither man nor woman is named; only at the end does the prose reveal that he was of the imperial house.
The setting is the verandah of the first wife's house on a bright moonlit night, with the man hidden among the garden trees.
What prompted the poem was her sitting up late gazing at the moon. She spoke it to her servant, and the hidden man heard it.
Hearing it he was filled with tenderness, and when he saw her hold water to her breast until it boiled he ran out to her. The section then moves to the sight of the new wife and his never going back.

The opening — the wind blowing and white breakers rising far out — works as a preface, its verb for rising leading by sound into the mountain's name.
Tatsuta stands on the road from Yamato into Kawachi, and the prose has told us that the new wife's house lies along it.
The closing asks whether he is crossing it alone at midnight, in the form of a question.
A seascape leads into a mountain name, and the poem ends in concern for the man crossing it. She speaks of a man on his way to another woman as a traveller in danger on the road, and not a word of jealousy appears. That the man, listening from hiding, was moved is because the poem did not blame him.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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