Tabibito no onaji michi ni ya idetsuramu kasa uchikitaru ariake no tsuki

English Translation

Has it too set out
along the same road as we,
a traveller too—
the dawn moon, that has put on
a broad rain-hat of its own?

Meaning

Has it come out on the same road as the travellers, this dawn moon that has put on a rain-hat of cloud?

Commentary

Section 8 The Totomi Road: from Takashi Hill to Kikugawa

The journey of the Izayoi Nikki leaves Mikawa for Totomi, and this section covers three days, the twenty-second to the twenty-fourth. At dawn on the twenty-second she sets out while it is still deep night, in the light of the lingering moon, and feels sadder than at any time before. Hearing one of her attendants say that even the dawn moon has put on a rain-hat, she makes another poem. She crosses Takashi Hill as well; the stretch where the sea comes into view is very fine. The wind off the water is wild, the roar of the pines is fearful, and the waves run very high. Black birds flocking on a brilliantly white sandspit turn out to be cormorants. Looking out from the bridge at Hamana, she sees great numbers of gulls crossing in flight, diving under the water and settling on the rocks. That night she stops at the post town of Hikuma; the whole district there was called Hamamatsu, and people she had once counted close had lived there. The faces of those who used to live there come back to her, and she is moved again and again by the span of life that has let her come round and see the place once more. On the twenty-third she boards the ferry at the Tenryu crossing, and remembering Saigyo's day she feels very forlorn; there is only one lashed boat for all the crowd going back and forth, and the pole never rests. That night she stops at the provincial seat of Mitsuke in Totomi, where the settlement is derelict and frightening, and there is a well of water beside it. On the twenty-fourth, around midday, she crosses Saya no Nakayama. Near the shrine called Koto-no-mama the autumn colour is at its height and very fine; being in the lee of the hills, it seems the storms do not reach it. As she goes deeper in, the ridges running away on either side are like no other hills, and she feels forlorn and moved. She stops at Kikugawa, a place in the village at the foot of the pass. Rising at dawn she sees that the moon has come out, and the sound of the river is terrible.

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 guide, and her attendants; the second poem of the twenty-second is made in answer to a remark by one of those attendants. All eleven poems of this section are her own, with no one to answer them. The Hamamatsu poem recalls that people close to her had once lived in that district, and the prose says that she called out the children and grandchildren of those she had known there and spoke with them.

Dawn on the twenty-second of the tenth month of Koan 2 (1279), on the road under the lingering moon.

One of her attendants remarked that even the dawn moon had put on a rain-hat, and the poem was made on hearing it. It is the only poem in this section prompted directly by another person's words.

There is no reply. The prose then crosses Takashi Hill and comes out on the stretch of road from which the sea is visible.

An offhand remark by a servant is taken up whole and made into a poem. The hat of the moon is the ring of thin cloud that sometimes stands about it, and the attendant had seen in that ring a traveller's hat. The first line uses the word for traveller as it was used in "Tabibito wa mina morotomo ni asa tachite koma uchiwatasu Yasu no kawagiri" on the Omi road and in "Tabibito wa mino uchiharau yūgure no ame ni yado karu Kasanui no sato" in Mino, putting travellers in general first. The interrogative particle in the second line asks whether the moon has come out on the same road. The third line joins a perfective to a present conjecture and binds back to that particle. In the fourth line the verb of putting on carries only a strengthening prefix. By casting the moon as a fellow traveller, the poem turns into a companion the very thing that, in "Sumiwabite tsuki no miyako o ideshikado ukimi hanarenu ariake no kage" just before, had weighed on her as what could not be shaken off. The closing line ends on a noun. Two poems in a row on the same moon of the same dawn, in wholly different moods, is the pleasure of this pairing.

Author

Abutsu-ni

Source

Izayoi Nikki

Other