わたつ海の沖にこがるる物見れば
あまの釣して帰るなりけり
あまの釣して帰るなりけり
- Roma-ji
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Watatsuumino okinikogaruru monomireba amanotsurishite kaerunarikeri
- English Translation
-
On the wide sea's face
out where something burns and smokes
when I look to see
it is the fisherfolk who fish
and are coming home again
- Meaning
- Looking at what is burning out on the open sea, I find it is only the fisherfolk coming home from their angling.
- Commentary
-
182 In the Reign of the Late Emperor Murakami
In the reign of the late Emperor Murakami, the Emperor was walking about at an hour when no one was around, attended by the Chamberlain's Lady called Hyōe. Smoke was rising from a brazier. What is that, he said — go and look. She went, came back, and presented this poem. A frog had jumped into the brazier and was burning there.
The late Emperor Murakami was the grandfather of Emperor Ichijō. Hyōe was a lady in his service.
The section is told as a story of the past, set in Murakami's reign, in the palace.
The immediate occasion is the Emperor noticing the smoke and ordering her to go and find out what it was. What he asked for was a report, not a poem; she did not simply say what she had seen, but delivered it in verse.
The section is very short and records no reaction. The one thing set down is that a question from the Emperor was answered with a poem, and that this was quickness worth remembering.
The first line is conventionally attached to words for the open sea or for divers, and here it lifts an incident inside a small brazier straight into the scale of the ocean. In the second line the verb for scorching is also the verb for rowing. What is actually scorching is the frog; placed in a seascape, the same sound produces a boat being rowed out on the water.
The third line — when I look at it — folds the Emperor's own command to go and see directly into the poem. The fourth brings in the fisherfolk at their angling; some read a further echo of roasting in the word for fishing, but on the surface it is simply divers at the end of a day's work.
The close pairs a copular auxiliary with one of sudden recognition, so that the rhythm of a report — I looked, and this is what it was — becomes the ending of the poem. The whole point is that a mean and rather unpleasant thing, a frog burning in a brazier, is never named at all, but converted into the sight of fisherfolk rowing home. Turning a required report into a poem is close in spirit to "Kokoninomi mezurashitomiru yukinoyama tokorodokoroni furinikerukana," which turns idle news the same way — except that this one is done under the pressure of addressing the sovereign.
- Source
- Makura no Soshi
- Other
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- Ōsaka, they say is a barrier easily crossed and being that gate before ever the cock has cried it stands open, and waits there
- Even this alone I hold as his memory yet in the city have they changed their leaves already these sleeves of oak-dyed mourning
- How, by what device how should a falsehood be known how should it be shown were there in the sky above no god of Tadasu to judge
- Faint or deeply dyed it has nothing to do with that for a flower's sake the wretched measure of me is shown, and it is bitter