Koekurasu fumoto no sato no yūyami ni matsukaze okuru Saya no Nakayama

English Translation

The whole day I climbed,
and into the dusk that fills
the village below,
the wind in the pines sends down
the sound of Saya's high pass.

Meaning

I spent the whole day crossing it, and now, into the dusk of the village at its foot, Saya no Nakayama sends down the sound of wind in the pines.

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.

Evening of the twenty-fourth of the tenth month of Koan 2 (1279): she comes down from Saya no Nakayama in Totomi to the village of Kikugawa at its foot.

She had crossed the pass around midday, and as she went deeper in, the ridges running off on either side were like no other hills, and she felt forlorn and moved. She stopped at Kikugawa, and the poem was made in the dusk there.

There is no reply. The prose goes on to say that she rose at dawn and found the moon out, and another poem follows.

The poem is made of listening: the pass she has crossed goes on sending sound down to the foot of it. The opening verb means to spend the day in the crossing, and it holds a whole day in one word. The second line names the village of Kikugawa where she has just arrived, and the difference in height between hill and village is set there. The third line uses the same word for dusk as "Harubaru to Futamurayama o yukisugite nao sue tadoru nobe no yūyami" on the Mikawa road, so that the close of a day spent crossing a pass is twice rendered as dusk. In the fourth line the verb means to send something down, which makes the hill the sender and the woman in the village the receiver, so that the pass she has left still reaches toward her. The closing line ends on the name of the sender. What the prose called forlorn and moving is nowhere stated in the poem; it is carried entirely by the sound of pine wind coming across the dark.

Author

Abutsu-ni

Source

Izayoi Nikki

Other