Ta ga kata ni nabikihatete ka Fuji no ne no keburi no sue no miezu naruramu

English Translation

Toward whose quarter
has it drifted off for good,
that we see no more
the trailing end of the smoke
that used to rise from Fuji?

Meaning

Toward whom has it drifted away for good, that the far end of Fuji's smoke can no longer be seen at all?

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-sixth of the tenth month of Koan 2 (1279), looking up at Mount Fuji from the Suruga coast.

No smoke was rising from the mountain. Long ago her father had taken her as far as Totomi, in the days when she wrote the poem she quotes by its opening words, and then the trailing smoke of Fuji had been plainly visible morning and evening; when she asked in what year it had ceased, no one could even answer clearly. The poem belongs to that moment.

There is no reply. The prose goes on to say that the words of the Kokinshu preface came back to her, and two further poems follow.

The poem asks after the whereabouts of something that can no longer be seen, and by that means turns toward the lost years. The interrogative in the first line answers the verb of conjecture at the end, and the question is framed as though of a person: toward whom? The verb in the second line means both that smoke trails on the wind and that a heart inclines toward someone, and by bringing the language of love into it the poem speaks as if the smoke had gone off to somebody. The third line names the peak. The fourth line means the far end of the trailing smoke. The closing verb is a present conjecture that binds back to the opening question. As the prose says, when she asked in what year it had ceased no one could answer, so this is a question with no answer; following "Hamamatsu no kawaranu kage o tazunekite mishi hito nami ni mukashi o zo tou" on the Totomi road, where she questioned the pines about the past, here again what has been lost is left with no one able to say where it went.

Author

Abutsu-ni

Source

Izayoi Nikki

Other