Waka no ura ni kakitodometaru moshiogusa kore o mukashi no katami tomo miyo

English Translation

At Waka Bay shore,
gathered and set down in ink,
this seaweed for salt—
look upon it and see here
a keepsake of one long gone.

Meaning

Here is the salt-weed I raked together and set down at the bay of poetry; look on it as a keepsake of the one who is gone.

Commentary

Section 3 The Parting Exchange of Poems

After the death of her husband Fujiwara no Tameie, Abutsu-ni fell into dispute with Tameie's heir Tameuji over the inheritance of the Hosokawa estate in Harima Province, and when her suit in the capital came to nothing she resolved to appeal directly to the shogunal court in Kamakura. As she made ready to leave, the garden and the brushwood fence, already grown wild even while she had kept them under her eye, seemed certain to grow wilder still in her absence, and the tears on the sleeves of those who clung to her could not be consoled. The Jiju and the Taifu in particular sank into such dejection that it pained her, and after talking them round she looked into the sleeping chamber and found the old pillow of the departed lying just as it had always lain. From there the parting exchanges follow one upon another: the poem written beside the pillow; the poem sent with the notebooks of verse handed down in the house, sealed with a colophon and dispatched to the Jiju; the Jiju's reply; the poem the Taifu set down in his writing practice and the answer added on the same sheet; the poem of the Risshi, the elder brother who came down from the mountain to see her off; the poem of the Ajari no Kimi, who was to travel with her as guide; and the poem sent to her only daughter, in service at the women's palace, together with her reply. Abutsu-ni records that she has written out the poems of her five children without leaving any out, admitting that to a parent's heart every one of them seemed moving, and then, telling herself that such weakness will not do, she casts it all off and sets out.

Abutsu-ni was a consort of Fujiwara no Tameie and the mother of Tamesuke and Tamemori. Tameie was a poet of the Mikohidari house and a son of Fujiwara no Teika. The Jiju is her son Reizei Tamesuke, founder of the Reizei house, seventeen by the old count at this time; the Taifu is his younger brother Tamemori, then fifteen. The Risshi is a son in holy orders, called in the text the Jiju's elder brother, whom the interlinear note names Gensho. The Ajari no Kimi is a mountain ascetic, described in the text as elder than these, whom the note names Keiyu. There was only one daughter, in service at what the text calls the women's palace close by, which the note identifies as Shin'yomeimon'in. Abutsu-ni gathers all five together under the phrase 'her five children'.

The tenth month of Koan 2 (1279), at her house in the capital around the time of departure, in the scene that follows the writing of the poem beside the pillow.

She added a colophon to the notebooks of verse handed down through the generations, chose out only what was of substance, and sent them to the Jiju; this is one of the two poems written to go with them.

The Jiju's answer came back very quickly: "Tsui ni yomo ada ni wa naraji moshiogusa katami o miyo no ato ni nokoseba." Because the reply was so grown-up, Abutsu-ni felt both reassured and moved, and wept again, wishing the departed could hear it.

This is the poem of the moment when the notebooks of verse pass to the child, and the theme of the house of poetry stands out here more plainly than anywhere else in the Izayoi Nikki. The bay named in the first line is a famous poetic place in Kii, and at the same time it names the way of poetry itself. The second line means both to write down and to rake together, and it links by association with bay and with salt-weed. The salt-weed of the third line is the seaweed raked up on the shore for salt-burning, set here as a figure for the gathered notebooks, and the noun brings the poem to a momentary halt. The fourth line turns from figure back to fact, for it points at the actual bundle being sent. The verb that closes the poem is an imperative, so that this is less a wish than an instruction laid on the child who is to carry on the house of poetry. The word for the past refers to the world of the departed Tameie, and it answers the word for old in "Todomeoku furuki makura no chiri o dani waga tachisaraba tare ka harawamu."

Author

Abutsu-ni

Source

Izayoi Nikki

Other