Uraji yuku kokorobososa o namima yori idete shirasuru ariake no tsuki

English Translation

The forlornness of
going by these shore roads—it
comes out of the waves
to tell me what I am, this
thin moon lingering at dawn.

Meaning

The forlornness of travelling these shore roads: it is the thin dawn moon, risen from between the waves, that tells me of it.

Commentary

Section 11 The Sagami Road: from Sakawa to Kamakura

Out of Izu the journey of the Izayoi Nikki enters Sagami, and with this section the record of the road from the capital to Kamakura comes to an end. She fords the Mariko River in deep darkness. That night she stops at a place called Sakawa, and word goes round that they are to enter Kamakura the next day. On the twenty-ninth she leaves Sakawa and goes on and on along the beach road. Over the sea, as the day breaks, a very thin moon comes out. Mist rises above the waves washing in and out at the water's edge, and the many fishing boats that had been there are lost to sight. That the capital should now be so utterly far away still seems to her like a dream. Three poems come of this; then the prose notes that the place where she is to live in the east is called Tsukikage-no-yatsu, and the record of the road is over.

Abutsu-ni was a consort of Fujiwara no Tameie and the mother of Tamesuke and Tamemori; she has come down 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 three poems of this section are her own, with no one to answer them. They belong to the fourteenth day after her departure from the capital on the sixteenth of the tenth month, the day she enters Kamakura. The one long gone in the last poem is her late husband Tameie, whom the diary calls by the same name in the section of parting poems.

Dawn on the twenty-ninth of the tenth month of Koan 2 (1279): out of Sakawa in Sagami and along the beach road; the morning of her entry into Kamakura.

Going on and on along the beach from Sakawa, she saw a very thin moon come out over the sea as the day broke. The poem belongs to that moment.

There is no reply. The prose then turns to the mist rising over the waves at the water's edge and hiding the fishing boats.

On the last morning of the road the dawn moon, sung again and again through the journey, appears once more. The first line, going by shore roads, states the day's route as it stands. The second line takes the word the prose has used so often on this journey and makes a noun of it, so that the forlornness itself becomes the object of the poem. The third line means from between the waves, describing a thin moon lying low over the sea, and takes up the prose remark that a very thin moon had come out. In the fourth line the verb means to make something known, so that the forlornness is within her while what tells her of it comes from outside. The closing line ends on the noun. This is the same dawn moon that was mourned as inescapable in "Sumiwabite tsuki no miyako o ideshikado ukimi hanarenu ariake no kage," taken for a companion in "Tabibito no onaji michi ni ya idetsuramu kasa uchikitaru ariake no tsuki," and sent as a messenger in "Kumo kakaru Saya no Nakayama koenu to wa miyako ni tsugeyo ariake no tsuki"; here at the last it appears as the one who names the traveller's heart for her. The preface says she resolved to set out drawn by the lingering moon of the sixteenth night, and the record of the road closes with a moon as well.

Author

Abutsu-ni

Source

Izayoi Nikki

Other