Sadamenaki inochi wa shiranu tabi naredo mata ōsaka to tanomete zo yuku

English Translation

Uncertain of life,
and the road ahead unknown—
yet at Meeting Hill
I set my trust that again
we shall meet, and so I go.

Meaning

Life is uncertain and the road unknown, yet I go trusting in the name of the Hill of Meeting, that we shall meet again.

Commentary

Section 4 Setting Out on the Omi Road: from Awataguchi to Samegai

Casting off the parting exchanges, Abutsu-ni at last leaves the capital. The journey of the Izayoi Nikki begins here: at a place called Awataguchi she sends the carriage back, and from there the road is made on horseback and on foot. Before long she crosses the Barrier of Ausaka, and then, coming to Noji, she finds no one either behind or ahead; the day is drawing to its close, and just as she thinks how forlorn it all is, cold winter rain comes down as well. She had meant to reach a place called Kagami that night, but darkness fell before she could get there, and she stopped at Moruyama. Even there the rain followed after her. It was the night of the sixteenth, she notes, and being much wearied she lay down. In the faint remaining moonlight of daybreak she left Moruyama, and as she crossed the Yasu River only the hoofbeats of travellers going on ahead came clearly through a very deep mist. On the night of the seventeenth she stopped at the post station of Ono, where the moon came out and the gaps between the pines ranged along the ridge could be told apart, most beautifully. From there too she groped her way out through deep night mist, and came to the spring called Samegai. In summer, she thinks, one would hardly pass it by; and indeed those going on foot still stop and draw from it.

Every poem in this section is Abutsu-ni's own, with no one to answer her. She was a consort of Fujiwara no Tameie and the mother of Tamesuke and Tamemori. Left behind in the capital are the Jiju, that is Reizei Tamesuke, the Taifu Tamemori, and the daughter in service at the women's palace. Travelling with her is the Ajari no Kimi, whom the interlinear note names Keiyu, who had set out to escort her as guide, along with attendants and those going on foot. Since the carriage was sent back at Awataguchi, from here on the journey is made without it.

The sixteenth day of the tenth month of Koan 2 (1279), the day of departure, at the Barrier of Ausaka on the border of Yamashiro and Omi, just after the carriage was sent back at Awataguchi.

The carriage was turned back at Awataguchi, and this first poem of the journey was made as she crossed the barrier soon after.

It is a solitary poem, with no one to answer. The prose then moves on to Noji, where the empty road and the cold rain continue to deepen the loneliness of the journey.

The travel poems of the Izayoi Nikki begin here. The first line speaks of what is impermanent, and it governs the second, so that the poem opens on the fear of not knowing what will become of her life. The concessive particle in the third line grants that fear and turns from it toward the wish below. The fourth line puns on the place name, the Hill of Meeting, and on the verb to meet again, so that the barrier is read not as a place of parting but as a place of reunion. The emphatic particle binds to the closing verb in the attributive form. Having strengthened the note of trust, the poem ends on a verb of motion, showing one who does not stop but goes on. It also restates for herself what she had written to the Taifu in "Tsukuzuku to sora na nagame so koishikuba michi tōku tomo haya kaerikomu."

Author

Abutsu-ni

Source

Izayoi Nikki

Other