Itazura ni mekari shioyaku susabi ni mo koishi ya nareshi sato no amabito

English Translation

To no purpose, I
cut the seaweed, burn the salt—
and at such pastimes
how I long for you, old friend,
diver-nun of my own town!

Meaning

Idly cutting seaweed, idly burning salt: and at such pastimes how I long for you, the nun of the village I knew.

Commentary

Section 15 The Exchange with Her Sisters

Hearing that there is a courier for the capital at dawn, Abutsu-ni sits up all night writing letters. Among them, to the elder sister with whom she is on terms of complete openness and mutual trust, she writes at length about the young children. As she writes, the wind and waves grow loud as they always do, and she sets down simply what is before her at that moment. In the same way she writes to her younger sister, the nun, whom she misses in her old home, and wraps up a few odds and ends of shore produce to send with it, adding a poem. After some time the replies of the two sisters arrive, and she finds them deeply moving. There is a poem from the elder sister, who was the wife of the man known as the Middle Captain of Nakanoin, now, it seems, a lay monk of the third rank; she lives in the same world and yet wholly withdrawn from it, given to religious practice. The younger sister writes at length in answer to the poem about cutting seaweed and burning salt, saying gracefully that a sea of tears for those one loves is banked up under the pillow in the capital too, and adds a poem of her own. She too had served Anka-mon'in. That both of them should set down, thought by thought, the things they keep to themselves, is deeply moving and finely done.

Abutsu-ni was a consort of Fujiwara no Tameie and the mother of Tamesuke and Tamemori, living at Tsukikage-no-yatsu in Kamakura. Her elder sister was the wife of the man known as the Middle Captain of Nakanoin, now a lay monk of the third rank; she lives in the same world and yet wholly apart from it, given to religious practice, and she is the one person with whom Abutsu-ni is entirely open. The younger sister is a nun who had served Anka-mon'in. The prose calls the two of them simply the pair of sisters. What Abutsu-ni wrote to her elder sister was about the young children left behind in the capital.

Near the end of Koan 2 (1279), at Tsukikage-no-yatsu in Kamakura; a poem in the letter sent to her younger sister the nun by the same dawn courier.

Writing to the sister she misses in her old home, she wrapped up a few odds and ends of shore produce to send with the letter and added this poem.

The sister's reply takes over the second line of this poem unchanged, and the prose records that she wrote gracefully of a sea of tears for those one loves banked up under the pillow in the capital too.

A single pivot binds her own life by the sea to a nun's life in the capital. The first line means to no purpose, without profit, and it is how she chooses to speak of her life in the east. The second line names the work of the shore people, cutting seaweed and burning salt, answering directly the shore produce she is sending. The word in the third line means a pastime rather than a livelihood, and by calling it that she implies how rustic her life must look to someone in the capital. The exclamatory particle in the fourth line lets feeling out in the middle of the line: how I long for you. In the closing line the word for those who work the sea is also the word for a nun, and it is chosen because the letter goes to a nun. Since the village named is the capital, which has no sea, it is only by that pivot that there can be shore people there at all, and the turn by which a word of the coast comes to name someone in the capital is the point of the poem. Seaweed, salt and shore-folk run together as words of the coast, continuing the habit, seen since "Kokoro kara oritatsu Tago no amagoromo hosanu urami to hito ni kataru na" in Suruga, of describing her own condition in the language of the fisherfolk.

Author

Abutsu-ni

Source

Izayoi Nikki

Other