Narawazu yo yoso ni kikikoshi Kiyomigata araiso nami no kakaru nezame wa

English Translation

This I never knew,
who had only heard the name
of Kiyomi Bay,
waking with the rough shore's waves
breaking over me like this.

Meaning

I am not used to it: Kiyomi Bay, which I had only ever heard of, and a waking like this, with the waves of the rough shore breaking over me.

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 night of the twenty-sixth of the tenth month of Koan 2 (1279), in a village near the sea by the barrier of Kiyomi in Suruga.

The wind was wild all night and the waves seemed to rise and break over the very pillow; the poem belongs to that waking.

There is no reply. The prose goes on to the moment when she looks at Mount Fuji and finds no smoke rising.

The poem holds the astonishment of lying down in a place she had known only by name. The first line opens with an exclamation: this is not what I am used to. The second line means to have heard of a thing as something belonging to others, and it continues the feeling of "Wataramu to omoi ya kakeshi Azumaji ni ari to bakari wa Kikugawa no mizu," which closed the Totomi road, of standing where one had only known a name. The third line names the celebrated bay she had passed at dusk, repeating the place-name of "Kiyomigata toshi furu iwa ni koto towamu nami no nureginu iku kasane kitsu" in a new position, so that the daylight sight and the night's sound make a pair. The fourth line takes up the prose remark that the waves broke over her pillow. In the closing line the verb means both that the waves break over her and, simply, like this, so that the reach of the water and the quality of the waking coincide in a single word. What the poem records is the instant when a name long familiar in verse turns into the fact of a sleepless night.

Author

Abutsu-ni

Source

Izayoi Nikki

Other