Mitsushio no sashite zo kitsuru Narumigata kami ya aware to mirume tazunete

English Translation

As the high tide comes
in, so I have come, making
for Narumi Bay—
seeking the sea-grass, the eyes
in which the god shows pity.

Meaning

Like the tide setting in, I have made my way here to Narumi Bay, seeking the sea-grass, and the eyes with which a god might look on me in pity.

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 twentieth of the tenth month of Koan 2 (1279), before the god at the Atsuta shrine in Owari.

It is the third of the four poems written out and offered there.

Being an offering, it has no reply. The prose afterwards notes that the tide at Narumi Bay happened to be out at that hour.

The poem lays the movement of the tide over her own journey and asks for the eyes of a god. The first line names the flood tide, and where "Inoru zo yo waga omou koto Narumigata kata hiku shio mo kami no manimani" had taken the ebb, this one takes the flow, so that the two make a pair. In the second line the verb means both that a tide sets in and that one makes for a place, and an emphatic particle bound to a perfective form states flatly the fact of having come all this way. The third line sets the name of the place as the destination reached. The interrogative particle in the fourth line frames the question of whether the god will feel for her. In the closing line the word for sea-grass is also the word for the eye that sees, and tide, tidal flat and sea-grass hang together as words of the coast. The poem breaks off in a continuative form, so that no answer comes, and only the attitude of seeking the god's gaze remains.

Author

Abutsu-ni

Source

Izayoi Nikki

Other