Ada ni nomi namida wa kakeji tabigoromo kokoro no yukite tachikaeru hodo

English Translation

Not in vain, at least,
shall I let these tears be shed—
the traveller's robe:
for the while the heart goes out
and is cut and comes back home.

Meaning

I will not let my tears be spent for nothing, not while the heart that set out in travelling robes is going and coming home again.

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 before departure, when the Risshi came down from the mountain to see her off.

He too was feeling forlorn, and having seen "Harubaru to yukusaki tōku shitawarete ikani sonata no sora o nagamemu" and the poem his mother had added to it, he wrote this on the same practice sheet.

The prose records that even as he avoided ill-omened words in this way, his tears fell, and he covered them with rough talk. The Ajari no Kimi then added his own poem to the same sheet.

This is a poem of good omen, avoiding unlucky words at the parting and speaking as if the safe return were already settled. The first line means in vain, and what it denies is not the weeping but the weeping's coming to nothing. The auxiliary in the second line expresses negative intention, so that the line is something he tells himself. The third line names the traveller's robe, both as the dress of the journey and as the word that draws out the verbs of setting out and returning. The fourth line says that the heart goes ahead of the body, so that those who stay behind travel with her. In the closing line the verb is a pivot, meaning both to cut and re-sew a robe and to set out and come home, and the words for casting, standing and returning all belong to the imagery of clothing. By placing the return in language as a thing already fixed, the poem shows the care against ill-omened speech that the prose describes.

Author

Minamoto no Shō

Source

Izayoi Nikki

Other