Azumaji no Yusaka o koete miwataseba shioki nagaruru Hayakawa no mizu

English Translation

Crossing on the road
east, over Yusaka pass,
I look out and see
the salt-wood floating downstream
in the swift Hayakawa.

Meaning

Over the Yusaka pass on the eastern road, I look out and see the salt-wood going down with the current of the swift Hayakawa.

Commentary

Section 10 The Izu Road: from the Provincial Seat of Izu to Yusaka

Past the shore of Tago, the journey of the Izayoi Nikki turns into Izu. She stops at the provincial seat of Izu, and while the evening sun still lingers she goes to the shrine of Mishima and offers three poems. On the twenty-eighth she leaves the provincial seat and takes the Hakone road; it was still deep night. It was because the Ashigara road was said to be long that they went by Hakone. She comes down a very steep mountain, where it is hard to keep one's footing; the place is called Yusaka. When at last the crossing is over, there is a river at the foot called Hayakawa, and it truly runs fast. Seeing a great deal of timber floating down it, she asks what it means, and is told that it is salt-wood the fisherfolk are floating down to the shore. Coming out from Yusaka onto the coast, she finds the light going and any lodging still far off. She asks the name of a stretch of sea from which even Oshima in Izu can be seen, but there is no one who knows it. There is nothing there but the huts of the fisherfolk.

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. All seven poems of this section are her own, with no one to answer them. Three of them are votive poems offered at the shrine of Mishima in Izu, matching the four offered at the Atsuta shrine on the Owari road.

The twenty-eighth of the tenth month of Koan 2 (1279): she finishes the steep descent of Yusaka on the Hakone road and comes out at the Hayakawa below.

After a very steep descent, on a slope called Yusaka where it was hard to keep one's footing, she reached the river at the foot, which truly ran fast. Seeing much timber floating down it she asked what it meant, and was told that it was salt-wood the fisherfolk floated down to the shore. The poem comes from that answer.

There is no reply. The prose then goes on to her coming out from Yusaka onto the coast and looking for somewhere to stop.

What the local people told her is set straight into the poem as landscape. The first line names the eastern road, the same phrase as in "Wataramu to omoi ya kakeshi Azumaji ni ari to bakari wa Kikugawa no mizu" on the Totomi road, restating the consciousness of having come east. The second line names the descent whose steepness the prose dwells on, and carries the relief of having got down it. The particle in the third line is a causal connective: crossing and looking out, this is what there was. The fourth line is the content of that discovery, taking into verse the local practice of floating firewood for salt-burning down to the shore. Like "Nushi ya tare yama no susono ni yado shimete atari sabishiki take no hitomura" on the Mikawa road, it is a poem in which a traveller's eye turns to how the people of a place live. The closing line ends on the river's water; the river's name is simply the word for swift, and the prose confirms it. That the speed of the current is what makes the whole arrangement work is held within the poem as well.

Author

Abutsu-ni

Source

Izayoi Nikki

Other