Tsuta kaede shigurenu hima mo Utsu no yama namida ni sode no iro zo kogaruru

English Translation

Ivy and maple—
and even when no rain falls
on Mount Utsu, still
my sleeves are scorched to their hue
by the burning of my tears.

Meaning

Ivy and maple: even in the hours when no shower falls on Mount Utsu, my sleeves are burnt to that same colour by my tears.

Commentary

Section 9 The Suruga Road: from the Oi River to the Shore of Tago

Out of Totomi the journey of the Izayoi Nikki enters Suruga, and this section runs from the twenty-fifth to the shore of Tago on the twenty-seventh. On the twenty-fifth she leaves Kikugawa and crosses the river called Oi. The water is very low, and contrary to what she had been told the crossing gives no trouble; the bed of the river is said to run some miles, and it is vast, so that one can imagine what it must look like in flood. Just as she is crossing Mount Utsu, a mountain ascetic known to the Ajari meets them on the road. It is as though the old story were being deliberately acted over again, and she finds it strange and delightful and moving and graceful all at once. Since they are travelling in haste she cannot write many letters, and sends word to one exalted household only. That night she stops at a place called Tegoshi. On the twenty-sixth she crosses a river called Warashina and comes out on the beach at Okitsu. At the house where she rests at midday there is a rough boxwood pillow; feeling wretched she lies down, and seeing an inkstone there she writes on the paper screen by the pillow without getting up. Toward dusk she passes the barrier of Kiyomi, where the waves breaking over the rocks look like white robes thrown on, which is very fine. Night falls soon, and she stops in a village near the sea, where the wind is wild all night and the waves seem to rise over the very pillow. Looking at Mount Fuji she finds no smoke rising; when she asks in what year it stopped, no one can even answer clearly, and the words of the Kokinshu preface come back to her. That night she lodges at a place called Nami-no-ue, and the roaring keeps her from closing her eyes. On the twenty-seventh, after full daylight, she crosses the Fuji River; the morning water is bitterly cold, and by her count she forded fifteen channels. The day then turns bright and mild and she comes out on the shore of Tago, where the sight of the fisherfolk at work moves her to speak.

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; at Mount Utsu they meet an ascetic known to the Ajari, and by him she sends a letter back to the capital. All eleven poems of this section are her own, with no one to answer them. In the passage on the smoke of Fuji it is recorded that long ago her father had taken her as far as the province of Totomi, in the days when she composed the poem she quotes by its opening words.

The twenty-fifth of the tenth month of Koan 2 (1279), on Mount Utsu in Suruga.

It is the second of the two poems written with the letter sent by the ascetic to one exalted household, following directly on "Waga kokoro utsutsu to mo nashi Utsu no yama yume ni mo tōki mukashi kou tote."

The reply to that letter reads "Tabigoromo namida o soete Utsu no yama shigurenu hima mo sazo shigururamu," taking back the very phrase of this poem's second line.

The autumn colour of Mount Utsu is transferred to the colour of tear-soaked sleeves. The first line names ivy and maple, the trees that belong to the narrow dark road over that mountain. The second line says, even in the hours when no shower falls, assuming the convention that it is the winter rain which dyes the leaves, and then turning it round: something takes colour without any rain at all. The third line repeats the mountain's name from the poem before it, binding the two to one place. The fourth line reveals what does the dyeing in the rain's stead. In the closing line the verb means both to be scorched and to burn with longing, and shower, colour and scorching hang together as words of the dyer. An emphatic particle bound to the final verb fixes everything on the one point of the sleeves' colour. In "Shigurekeri somuru chishio no hate wa mata momiji no nishiki iro kaeru made" on the Mikawa road the rain dyed a hillside; here tears dye a sleeve, and what does the dyeing has moved inward.

Author

Abutsu-ni

Source

Izayoi Nikki

Other