Kokoro kara oritatsu Tago no amagoromo hosanu urami to hito ni kataru na

English Translation

Of my own free will
I waded in—so do not
tell it to a soul,
that the Tago diver's robe
is never dried, and I grieve.

Meaning

It was my own heart that took me down into the water at Tago; so do not go telling anyone that the diver's robe is never dry, and call it a grievance.

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.

Midday on the twenty-seventh of the tenth month of Koan 2 (1279), on the shore of Tago in Suruga; the scene that closes the Suruga road.

The day was bright and mild and she came out on the shore of Tago. The poem comes from watching the fisherfolk at work, and the prose frames it as something she felt like saying.

There is no reply. The prose goes on to the lodging at the provincial seat of Izu, and to the visit to the shrine of Mishima while the evening sun still lingered, where she offers poems.

Borrowing the figure of the diving-women, the poem tells its hearer to say nothing of her tears. The first line means of one's own accord, setting down at once that no one forced this. In the second line the verb means to go down into the water, and the word for those who do so is also the name of the shore, so that the two coincide. The third line names the robe of the diving-women, always wet and never given time to dry. In the fourth line the word for grievance also means the sight of a bay, and diver, robe, drying and bay run together as words of the coast and of clothing. The robe that never dries is another name for sleeves perpetually wet with tears, and she will not have that called a grievance. The prohibitive particle at the end repeats exactly the close of "Naozari ni mirume bakari o karimakura musubiokitsu to hito ni kataru na" from the day before; two poems on two successive days ending in the same words set the key of a journey carried on with something that cannot be spoken. The answering of the first line by the last, that this road was her own choosing and so she will make no complaint, is of a piece with the opening of the diary, where she calls it a road no one else sent her on.

Author

Abutsu-ni

Source

Izayoi Nikki

Other