Kayou rashi miyako no hoka no tsuki mite mo sora natsukashiki onaji nagame wa

English Translation

They must pass, I think,
between us: for even here,
under a strange moon
beyond the capital, this
is the same gaze, the same sky.

Meaning

Our hearts must pass between us: for even under this moon outside the capital, the gazing is the same, and the same sky is dear.

Commentary

Section 23 The Exchange on the Sky One Longs For

The Gon-Chunagon writes again, at length, saying that since Abutsu-ni went down she has had no friend to make poems with, and that now autumn has come she thinks of her more and more and lies awake alone gazing at the moon; and she sends a poem. Abutsu-ni answers, writing that she too longs for her old home, and returns a poem of her own. Many poems from the capital have accumulated since then, the prose adds; she means to write them down as well. With that the pen stops, and the record of the exchanges of her Kamakura months is closed.

Abutsu-ni was a consort of Fujiwara no Tameie and the mother of Tamesuke and Tamemori, living at Tsukikage-no-yatsu in Kamakura. The Gon-Chunagon is the daughter of Tamenori, the former Captain of the Right Watch, and serves in the household of Omiya-in; since Tamenori was a son of Tameie and a younger brother of Tameuji, she is a granddaughter of Abutsu-ni's late husband. After the enquiry at the beginning of winter, the exchange of practice poems in spring, the exchange during the fever and the exchange about the cuckoo, this is the last of their correspondence, and of all the correspondents in the Kamakura chapters she is the one with whom the most poems pass.

Autumn of Koan 3 (1280), a poem in the reply sent from Tsukikage-no-yatsu in Kamakura to the capital.

It answers the Gon-Chunagon's "Azumaji no sora natsukashiki katami dani shinobu namida ni kumoru tsukikage," and came with a note saying that she too longs for her old home.

The prose then says that many poems from the capital have accumulated since, and that she means to write them down as well; and there the pen stops. The record of the exchanges closes unfinished, and the diary moves to the long poem placed at its end.

The exchanges of the Kamakura chapters close with the answer that, because both look at the same thing, their hearts must pass between them. The auxiliary in the first line marks an inference drawn from evidence: it must be so. What passes is not named, and the lower half of the poem supplies the grounds. The second line, outside the capital, restates the sent poem's eastern road from her own side. The particle in the third line carries a concessive shade: even under a moon in another country. The fourth line takes over the sent poem's second line whole, answering with the same word: you say the eastern sky is dear to you, and the capital's sky is dear to me. The closing line ends on a noun and, keeping its particle, turns back by inversion to the first line. The phrase for the same view is the one the Gon-Chunagon herself had used in spring in "Kurabe miyo kasumi no uchi no haru no tsuki harenu kokoro wa onaji nagame o," so that the word offered then as consolation is handed back in the last reply. Answering with the same sky, the same wind, the same view is the pattern that has run since the Mikushige-dono's reply and her elder sister's; the exchanges of the Kamakura chapters began in that pattern and end in it.

Author

Abutsu-ni

Source

Izayoi Nikki

Other