Omoiyare tsuyu mo shigure mo hitotsu nite yamaji wakekoshi sode no shizuku o

English Translation

Then send me your thought
for these: the dew and the rain
were all one to me,
and my sleeves are wet with drops
from pushing through mountain roads.

Meaning

Think of them, then: dew and winter rain were all one thing, and these are the drops on my sleeves from forcing my way over the mountain roads.

Commentary

Section 13 The Exchange with Tameko and Tamekane

The Kamakura chapters of the Izayoi Nikki proceed by way of letters arriving from the capital. The daughter of the former Captain of the Right Watch is a woman who composes poetry, and her poems have been taken into the imperial anthologies more than once. Known as the Gon-Chunagon in the household of Omiya-in, she writes to ask how the journey went, perhaps because the two of them had been in the habit of discussing poetry together morning and evening, and a poem comes with the letter. Abutsu-ni answers it. Then the lady's brother, the young lord Tamekane, writes in the same way of his concern for her and sends a poem of his own, and she answers that too. Two poems sent from the capital and two replies stand here together.

Abutsu-ni was a consort of Fujiwara no Tameie and the mother of Tamesuke and Tamemori, and is living at Tsukikage-no-yatsu in Kamakura. The Gon-Chunagon is the daughter of Tamenori, whom the text calls the former Captain of the Right Watch; she serves in the household of Omiya-in and has poems in the imperial anthologies. Tamenori was a son of Tameie and a younger brother of Tameuji, and the elder half-brother of Tamesuke, so that the Gon-Chunagon and Tamekane are grandchildren of Abutsu-ni's late husband. Tamekane is the lady's brother, called so in the text. Omiya-in was the consort of the retired emperor Go-Saga. Of all her correspondents, the Gon-Chunagon is the one with whom Abutsu-ni exchanges the most poems in what follows.

Winter of Koan 2 (1279), at Tsukikage-no-yatsu in Kamakura; her answer to the Gon-Chunagon's letter from the capital.

It answers "Harubaru to omoi koso yare tabigoromo namida shigururu hodo ya ikani to," and the prose says only that it was sent in reply.

After this reply another letter comes from the capital, from the young lord Tamekane, with a poem of his own.

The reply takes the sent poem's verb of concern and hands it back as an imperative, which makes the answering unmistakable. The first line lifts the verb from the second line of the sent poem and changes it from a bound construction to a command: if you are thinking of me, here is what there is to think of. The second line sets the dew on the grass beside the rain from the sky without distinguishing them; where the sent poem had spoken only of tears falling like rain, the reply says that on the actual road dew and rain and tears could not be told apart, and the whole rain-soaked stretch from Mino to Totomi in the earlier chapters stands behind that claim. The third line binds the three into one, and the fourth gives the hard road she crossed under them, the verb meaning to push through undergrowth. The closing line ends on a noun and at the same time, by its final particle, becomes the object of the imperative in the first line, so that the thing to be thought of is named last. The phrase for drops on a sleeve had been used in the preface of the people who clung to her at parting; here she uses it of her own.

Author

Abutsu-ni

Source

Izayoi Nikki

Other