Hamachidori nakite zo sasou yo no naka ni ato tomemu to wa omowazarishi o

English Translation

The shore plovers call
and go before me, leading—
yet I never thought
that I would leave tracks behind
in this world of ours at all.

Meaning

The shore plovers cry and go on ahead as though calling me after them; and yet I never thought to leave any trace of myself in this world.

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): after calling at the Atsuta shrine she passes Narumi Bay in Owari, at the hour of the ebb.

Because the tide was out she went along the flats without hindrance, and just then a great many shore plovers went on before her, looking as though they were showing her the way. The poem belongs to that moment.

There is no reply. The prose then goes on to her surprise at finding the capital-bird on this shore as well, and to one more poem.

In the birds going ahead over the flats she sees her own condition. The plover of the first line is the bird that leaves prints along the water's edge, the same word she had used as a warning to her child in "Anakashiko yokonami kakuna hamachidori hitokata naranu ato o omowaba"; here it appears as a thing actually before her eyes. In the second line an emphatic particle bound to the verb insists that it is the birds who are doing the calling, and, as the prose says, they had the look of guides: it is she who follows. From the third line to the fourth the poem turns from prints on the sand to the sense of leaving a name in the world, and the word for track is a pivot holding both. The exclamatory particle at the end leaves the thought unfinished: she had never meant any such thing. The word she had entrusted to her child in the capital comes back to her here as her own condition, one who will after all leave a trace, and it shows how the journey has grown heavier without her noticing.

Author

Abutsu-ni

Source

Izayoi Nikki

Other