安積山影さへ見ゆる山の井の
あさくは人を思ふものかは
あさくは人を思ふものかは
- Roma-ji
-
Asakayama kage sae miyuru yama no i no asaku wa hito o omou mono ka wa
- English Translation
-
Asaka mountain —
its very shape shows in the
shallow mountain well
and shallowly: is that how
one loves another person
- Meaning
- Asaka mountain shows its very shape in the shallow mountain well. And shallowly — is that how one loves another?
- Commentary
-
155 The Mountain Well
Long ago a Major Counsellor had a beautiful daughter whom he meant for the emperor. One of the low-ranking guards in his household fell in love with her and wasted away until he was like a sick man. At last he sent word that there was something he must say; and when she came out asking what it was, he set her on a horse he had ready, took her up, and carried her off. He fled with her as far as Asaka mountain, built a dwelling there, and lived with her for years, until she was with child. Then, while he was away, she looked at her reflection in the mountain well, and it was not the figure she had been but a frightening one; and in her shame she composed this poem and died. The man came home, at a loss, saw the poem, took its meaning to heart, and died beside her. It is a tale of long ago, the prose concludes.
A Major Counsellor stood next below the Minister of the Right. The guards named were low-ranking officers of the Ministry of Central Affairs. Asaka mountain is in Michinoku, in what is now Fukushima prefecture.
The setting is the dwelling at Asaka, years after the abduction, with the woman pregnant.
What prompted the poem was seeing her reflection in the mountain well, changed past recognition.
She composed it and died; the man, returning, read it and died beside her. The section closes with that and with the remark that it is a tale of long ago. The poem appears in the Man'yō-shū.
Asaka mountain is in Michinoku, and the place they fled to opens the poem.
A well in which even the mountain's shape shows: the word for shape means a reflection. These lines work as a preface to the word that follows.
That word means both shallow water and shallow feeling, so that the well's depth turns into the depth of a heart.
The closing question is rhetorical: does one love shallowly? One does not. Composed at the sight of her own altered face in the water, the poem speaks of the depth of her feeling. A changed appearance and an unchanged love meet on the surface of a well.
- Source
- Yamato Monogatari
- Other
-
- Whose purification is this cock with its streamers that on Tatsuta — where the Chinese robe is cut — goes on and on with its crying
- Like the water of the Tatsuta, running down to find the rock's root — not knowing where it goes: is it crying, then, as I do
- My heart is past all comforting now — at Sarashina watching the moon shine down on the mountain where the old woman was left behind
- The boat has gone too and no oars are to be seen — from today, how am I to make my crossing of this floating, wretched world