Kiyomigata toshi furu iwa ni koto towamu nami no nureginu iku kasane kitsu

English Translation

Let me ask the rocks
grown old at Kiyomi Bay:
how many layers
of the wet robes of the waves
have you had to put on now?

Meaning

Let me put a question to the ancient rocks of Kiyomi Bay: how many layers of the waves' wet robes have you been made to wear?

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.

Toward dusk on the twenty-sixth of the tenth month of Koan 2 (1279), passing the barrier of Kiyomi in Suruga.

The waves breaking over the rocks looked like white robes thrown over them, which she found very fine; the poem comes from that sight.

There is no reply. The prose goes on to the village near the sea where she lodged, and to the wild wind and waves of that night.

By questioning a wave-beaten rock the poem quietly folds in her own case. The first line names a celebrated stretch of the Suruga coast, where the barrier stood. The second line, rocks that have passed many years, sets up the one to be questioned. The third line is the same phrase for addressing something as in "Koto towamu hashi to ashi to wa akazarishi waga sumu kata no miyakodori ka to" on the Owari road, so that the pattern of putting questions to things that are not human recurs. The fourth line takes up the prose image of white robes thrown over the rocks; and the word for a wet robe also means a charge one is not guilty of, which sounds against the suit she is travelling to press. In the closing line the word for layers belongs with robe and wearing as words of clothing, and the perfective asks how many have been put on already. The question addressed to a rock leaves unsaid, but present, the thought that she too has worn such robes for many years.

Author

Abutsu-ni

Source

Izayoi Nikki

Other