Tabibito wa mina morotomo ni asadachite koma uchiwatasu Yasu no kawagiri

English Translation

The travellers all
set out together at dawn,
urging on their mounts
across the river, unseen
in the mist of Yasu stream.

Meaning

The travellers have all set out together in the early morning, urging their horses across the water, somewhere in the river mist of Yasu.

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.

Daybreak on the seventeenth day of the tenth month of Koan 2 (1279), crossing the Yasu River in Omi Province, in present-day Shiga.

She left Moruyama at dawn while a faint moon still hung in the sky, and as she crossed the Yasu River only the hoofbeats of travellers going on ahead came clearly through a very deep mist. The poem records that scene as it was.

It is a solitary poem, with no one to answer. The prose then moves to the post station of Ono on the night of the seventeenth, where the mist grows deeper still and leads on to the scene at Samegai.

Where the two preceding poems dwell on her own sleeves, wet with tears and rain, this one turns outward to the figures on the road. The first line sets the travellers as its subject, and the second means all together. In the loneliness of one who has left the capital alone, the poem notices that others on the same road are stirring at the same hour, and it stands in quiet contrast to the solitude of the parting scenes. The third line means to set out early in the morning. The fourth describes urging the horses across the water, with an intensifying prefix on the verb. The poem closes on a noun, resting on the place name. As the prose says, only the hoofbeats came clearly through a very deep mist: what the poem shows was not seen but imagined out of sound. In calling the unseen travellers all, the poem lets the depth of the mist be felt the more.

Author

Abutsu-ni

Source

Izayoi Nikki

Other