Kumo kakaru Saya no Nakayama koenu to wa miyako ni tsugeyo ariake no tsuki

English Translation

That I have crossed it,
the cloud-hung pass of Saya,
tell them in the town,
tell the capital of it,
moon that lingers into dawn.

Meaning

Tell them in the capital that I have crossed it, the cloud-hung pass of Saya no Nakayama: tell them, moon still lingering at dawn.

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-fifth of the tenth month of Koan 2 (1279), at the Kikugawa lodging in Totomi, the morning after the crossing of Saya no Nakayama.

Rising at dawn she found the moon out, and made this poem to it.

There is no reply. The prose adds that the sound of the river was terrible and gives one more poem; with that the Totomi road closes, and the twenty-fifth opens the Suruga road at the Oi River.

The moon in the sky is made a messenger to the capital. The first line describes cloud hanging on the moon and at the same time states the height of the pass she has crossed, taking up in a single word the impression of the ridges in the prose. The second line moves to the head of the poem the name that had closed "Koekurasu fumoto no sato no yūyami ni matsukaze okuru Saya no Nakayama," so that two poems face each other across the same hill, one at dusk and one at dawn. The perfective in the third line states the accomplished crossing, and the quotative that follows makes it the content of the command below. The fourth line is an imperative addressed straight to the moon. The last line ends on the noun, placing the one addressed at the very end. This is the same dawn moon as in "Sumiwabite tsuki no miyako o ideshikado ukimi hanarenu ariake no kage" and "Tabibito no onaji michi ni ya idetsuramu kasa uchikitaru ariake no tsuki" two days before: mourned first as what will not leave her, then taken for a fellow traveller, and now entrusted with a message home. The treatment of one moon shifts through three stages.

Author

Abutsu-ni

Source

Izayoi Nikki

Other