Ichinomiya na sae natsukashi futatsu naku mitsu naki nori o mamoru narubeshi

English Translation

First Shrine is its name—
and even the name draws me;
surely it must guard
the one Law, in which there is
neither a second nor third.

Meaning

First Shrine: even the name draws me. Surely what it guards is the one Law, in which there is no second and no third.

Commentary

Section 6 The Owari Road: from Ichi no Miya to Narumi Bay

The journey of the Izayoi Nikki passes out of Mino and onto the Owari road. After crossing the Sunomata by its floating bridge, she passes a shrine called Ichi no Miya and makes a poem there. On the twentieth she goes by the post station of Orito in Owari, and since the road did not take her out of her way she calls at the Atsuta shrine, brings out her inkstone, and writes out four poems to offer. Passing Narumi Bay, she finds the tide out and goes along the flats without hindrance. Just then a great many shore plovers went on ahead of her, looking for all the world as though they were showing her the way, and she made a poem. She had heard that the capital-bird was to be found only about the Sumida River, but the bird with the red bill and red feet was here on this shore as well, and seeing it she made one more poem; with that the Owari passage closes.

Abutsu-ni was a consort of Fujiwara no Tameie and the mother of Tamesuke and Tamemori, on her way from the capital to Kamakura to press her suit over the inheritance of the Hosokawa estate in Harima. With her went the Ajari no Kimi, the mountain ascetic who served as her guide, and her attendants. All seven poems of this section are her own, with no one to answer them. Four of them are votive poems, written out with her inkstone and offered at the Atsuta shrine; the other three are solitary poems of the road.

The nineteenth of the tenth month of Koan 2 (1279): having crossed the Sunomata in Mino by its floating bridge, she passes a shrine called Ichi no Miya.

The poem was made in passing, on the road beyond Sunomata, before the shrine gate.

There is no reply. The prose then turns to a new day, the twentieth, and the post station of Orito in Owari, and so to the scene of the offering at the Atsuta shrine.

The phrase about there being no second and no third rests on the doctrine of the one vehicle in the Lotus Sutra, which says that there is only the one Law, with no second and no third.

From the single word of the shrine's name the poem starts a reckoning of numbers and carries it into the Law. The first line sets down the name as it stands, and the word for one drives everything that follows. In the second line the additive particle piles on: not only the shrine itself but even the name. The adjective there, in classical usage, means that the heart is drawn toward something, and it accounts for a traveller stopping at a shrine she merely happened to pass. The third and fourth lines take up that one and strike out two and then three in turn, and by that reckoning alone the teaching of the one vehicle is produced. The word in the fourth line is the Buddhist Law. The closing line joins an assertive auxiliary to one of conjecture, so that the statement is held back: it must be so. The god is spoken of as guarding the Law, and where "Mamore tada chigiri musubu no kami naraba tokenu urami ni ware mayowasade" on the Mino road pressed a god in the imperative, here the same verb is used in conjecture, looking up rather than demanding.

Author

Abutsu-ni

Source

Izayoi Nikki

Other