Morotomo ni mekari shioyaku ura naraba nakanaka sode ni nami wa kakeji o

English Translation

If it were a bay
where together we could cut
seaweed and burn salt,
then the waves would not, I think,
break over our sleeves at all.

Meaning

If it were a bay where we cut the seaweed and burned the salt together, the waves would never break over our sleeves at all.

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the Middle Captain of Nakanoin, now, it seems, a lay monk of the third rank; she lives in the same world and yet wholly withdrawn from it, given to religious practice.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); a poem in the reply from her younger sister the nun, received in Kamakura.

It answers "Itazura ni mekari shioyaku susabi ni mo koishi ya nareshi sato no amabito," and came with a long letter in which she wrote gracefully of a sea of tears for those one loves banked up under the pillow in the capital too.

With this poem the exchange with the sisters ends. The prose closes by saying that it is deeply moving and finely done that they should set down, thought by thought, the things they keep to themselves, and moves on to the passing of the year and the coming of spring.

Not being able to be in the same place is said by way of one adverb meaning on the contrary. The first line means together, set at the head as the word that states separation from the other side. The second line takes back unchanged the second line of the sent poem: the shore work that the sender had spoken of in self-deprecation is received here as something the two would gladly share. The third line is a conditional, and its ground is that things are not so. The adverb in the fourth line means rather, or on the contrary, and carries the argument that were they together there would be fewer tears. The closing line joins a negative-intentional auxiliary to an exclamatory particle and stops, leaving the rest unsaid. The waves are tears as well, and the phrase for waves breaking over a sleeve is the one used in "Ada ni nomi namida wa kakeji tabigoromo kokoro no yukite tachikaeru hodo" among the parting poems and in "Tachihanare yo mo ukinami wa kake mo seji mukashi no hito no onaji yo naraba," which closed the record of the road; it has run through the whole diary. Where the elder sister answered that she hears the same wind, the younger answers that she wishes they shared the same bay, and each reply touches the separation in its own way.

Source

Izayoi Nikki

Other