Mizu no awa no ukiyo ni wataru hodo o miyo hayase no obune sao mo yasumezu

English Translation

Look how we cross this
world of foam upon the stream—
a small boat set out
on a swift shoal, and the pole
is never allowed to rest.

Meaning

Look at us crossing this world as fleeting as foam on water: a small boat on the swift shallows, and the pole never once at rest.

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.

The twenty-third of the tenth month of Koan 2 (1279), boarding the ferry at the Tenryu crossing in Totomi.

On the ferry she remembered Saigyo's day and felt very forlorn; there was only one lashed boat for the crowd going back and forth, and no time to bring the pole about. The poem belongs to that moment. What the prose means by Saigyo's day is not stated in the text.

There is no reply. The prose then moves to the night's lodging at the provincial seat of Mitsuke.

The restlessness of a ferry is turned directly into a figure for making one's way through the world. The first line runs a syllable long and means, as fleeting as foam on water, qualifying the world named next. In the second line the same syllables mean both floating and bitter, exactly as in "Kari no yo no yukiki to miru mo hakanashi ya mi o ukifune o ukihashi ni shite" on the Mino road, so that the same conceit returns at another river crossing; and the verb means both to cross water and to make one's way through life. The imperative in the third line is thrown out to no one in particular and gives the poem its edge. The fourth line halts on a noun and takes up the prose remark that there was no time to bring the pole about. The closing line breaks off in the negative, and the boatman poling without pause becomes the unresting labour of human life itself. Water, foam, shallows, boat and pole run through the whole poem as words of the river.

Author

Abutsu-ni

Source

Izayoi Nikki

Other