Anakashiko yokonami kakuna hamachidori hitokata naranu ato o omowaba

English Translation

Ah, take heed, I pray,
let no side-wave wash across,
plover of the shore,
if you hold in any thought
these tracks that are not common.

Meaning

Take care, shore plover, that no sidelong wave should wash over them, if you have any regard for tracks so far from ordinary.

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 of sending the notebooks of verse to the Jiju.

This is the second of the two poems written to accompany the notebooks, set down immediately after the first.

The Jiju answered by taking the words of this poem back into his own: "Mayowamashi oshiezariseba hamachidori hitokata naranu ato o sore tomo."

The poem carries straight on from the shore imagery of "Waka no ura ni kakitodometaru moshiogusa kore o mukashi no katami tomo miyo." The opening exclamation strengthens the prohibition that follows. The second line pictures a wave striking in from the side and erasing the footprints on the sand; the verb means to cast over, and the final particle forbids. The plover of the third line is the bird that leaves prints along the water's edge, invoked here as an address to the one who writes poems down, and it joins by association with bay, wave and track. The fourth line means far from ordinary. In the closing line the word for track is a pivot, standing at once for the bird's footprints and for the hand that has written, for the poems left behind; and the conditional verb breaks off, leaving the prohibition hanging unsaid. Where the preceding poem states the wish of the one who hands the inheritance on, this one states the warning laid on the one who receives it, and the two form a single pair.

Author

Abutsu-ni

Source

Izayoi Nikki

Other