Kuchimosenu konokawabashira nokorazuwa mukashinoatoo ikadeshiramashi

English Translation

Had they not remained—
these unrotted river posts
standing in the stream—
how could I ever have known
the traces of long ago?

Meaning

Had these pillars not stayed standing in the water, unrotted through all those years, how could I ever have known that a house once stood here?

Commentary

Section 2: From Kazusa to Shimōsa

The author grew up in Kazusa, far out in the eastern provinces, and longed for the tales told in the capital. When her father's term of office ended and the family was to return to the city, she set out in the ninth month, on the third day of the year she turned thirteen, moving first to a temporary lodging called Imatachi. On the fifteenth they crossed out of Kazusa into Shimōsa and stopped at a place called Ikata, and on the early morning of the seventeenth they set off again. That day they passed the site where a man called Mano no Chō was said to have lived long ago, who had a thousand and ten thousand bolts of cloth woven and bleached there, and they crossed a deep river by boat. Standing in the water were four great pillars, said to be the posts of the old gate. Hearing her companions compose poems at the sight of them, the author too made a poem, silently, within her heart.
That night they lodged at a place called Kuroto no Hama. On one side rose a broad hill; the sand stretched away white into the distance, pine groves grew thick, the moon was very bright, and the sound of the wind was desolate. As the others, moved by the scene, composed poems among themselves, she too made a poem in praise of the moon she was about to lose.

The author is known only as the daughter of Sugawara no Takasue. Her father was a fifth-generation descendant of Sugawara no Michizane and had gone down to the province as Governor of Kazusa. Her mother's elder half-sister was the author of the Kagerō Nikki. Her elder sister, her stepmother, and her nurse traveled with the party.

Daytime on the seventeenth day of the ninth month, Kannin 4 (1020), in the province of Shimōsa, while crossing a deep river by boat at the place said to be the site of Mano no Chō's house.

The poem came from the sight of the four great pillars still standing in the river, and from hearing her companions compose verses about them. The text notes that she composed hers not aloud but within her heart.

Because the poem was made silently, no response is recorded. That same night she composed "Madoromaji koyoinaradewa itsukamimu kurotonohamano akinoyonotsuki," and from here begins the habit, sustained throughout the travel record, of fixing in verse whatever the road set before her eyes.

The opening phrase kuchi mo senu, "not rotting away," modifies kono kawabashira, "these river pillars," and carries the weight of the long years they have withstood. In the third line, the particle wa attached to the imperfective form gives a conditional sense: "if they had not remained." Mukashi no ato in the fourth line means the trace of a dwelling that once stood here. The closing ikade shiramashi uses ikade as a rhetorical question and mashi as the auxiliary of counterfactual supposition: "how could I have known? I could not have," which turns into the recognition that it is precisely because the pillars survived that the past can be known at all. This movement, from a concrete object before the eyes toward vanished time, recurs throughout the travel record of the Sarashina Nikki. That she records composing inwardly while the others recited aloud is itself telling of her temperament.

Author

Sugawara no Takasue no Musume

Source

Sarashina Nikki

Other