Chikaekimi tōtōmino kamikakete mugenihamanano hashimizarikiya

English Translation

Swear to it, my lord
swearing by Tōtōmi
and by that god's name —
did you truly never see
the bridge they call Hamana

Meaning

Swear it, then — by the god of Tōtōmi. Do you really say you never so much as saw the bridge of Hamana?

Commentary

316 A Certain Lady and the Son of the Governor of Tōtōmi

A rumour went about that a certain lady was deeply involved with the son of the Governor of Tōtōmi. The lady herself insisted that she should be made to swear by her parent's name, that it was an outrageous lie, that she had never met him even in a dream — and she asked the author how she ought to put it.

Neither the lady nor the man is named.

The setting appears to be the palace, though the text does not say so.

The immediate occasion is the lady asking how to phrase her denial.

The text gives only the poem; whether she used it, and how the other party responded, is not recorded.

The first line is an imperative: swear, then. It takes the lady's own words — make me swear by my parent's name — and hands them straight back. The second line names the province where the man's father served, a name that also means the distant fresh water, that is, Lake Hamana, and so calls up the bridge that follows.

The third line completes the oath formula, answering the imperative. In the fourth an adverb of complete negation reinforces the denial, and the bridge of Hamana, a famous poetic site of that province, extends the chain from province to landmark, tracing the man's identity as it goes.

The close combines a past auxiliary with an interrogative particle: do you say you did not see it? And the verb for seeing carries, besides its plain sense, the old usage in which it means to be intimate with someone — so that on the surface the question is whether she has visited a famous place, while in substance it asks whether anything happened.

Province, lake, bridge, and a verb with two meanings run together in a single line, so that the more the lady denies it, the more the chain of place names points straight at the man. It presses hard for an oath while never once putting the suspicion into plain words — a good instance of how language was handled among women in palace service.

Author

Sei Shōnagon

Source

Makura no Soshi

Other