Toribeyama taninikemurino moetataba hakanakumieshi waretoshiranamu

English Translation

Toribeyama—
if smoke should rise in the vale,
let it be known then:
one who seemed so frail to you,
that it is I—know me there

Meaning

If smoke should rise from the valley of Toribeyama, know that it is I—the one who seemed so frail to you.

Commentary

Section 10: The Death of the Nurse, Absorbed in the Tale of Genji

In those days of longing to lose herself in tales, an epidemic threw the world into confusion that spring, and the nurse whose face she had seen so movingly by moonlight at the Matsusato crossing on the road up from Kazusa died on the first day of the third month. The author grieved beyond consolation, and even her wish to read tales left her. Weeping the days away, she looked out one evening and saw the cherry blossoms scattering, not one left on the branches, in the full glow of the setting sun. The poem came from that sight.
Then she heard that the daughter of the Jijū no Dainagon had died as well. She listened with deep pity to reports of how her husband, the Tono no Chūjō, was grieving, all the more because her own sorrow was fresh. Taking out the specimen of the young lady's hand that had been given her on her arrival in the capital as a model for her writing, she found written there the line "sayo fukete nezamezariseba" and, following it, the Toribeyama poem, set down in a script of indescribable beauty; and her tears only came the harder.
Afterwards, seeing her sunk in gloom, her mother sought out tales to show her, and on a visit to an aunt newly come up from the provinces the author was given the fifty and more volumes of the Tale of Genji in their chest, together with other tales besides. Lying behind her curtain of state and drawing them out one by one from the first volume, she felt that the rank of empress would be nothing beside it, and when a pure-looking monk appeared in a dream urging her to learn the fifth scroll of the Lotus Sutra at once, she paid it no mind and sank further into the world of the tales.

The author is known only as the daughter of Sugawara no Takasue. The nurse had traveled with the party from Kazusa and had parted from them at the Matsusato crossing. The Jijū no Dainagon is Fujiwara no Yukinari, who rose to Provisional Major Counselor but is called by the title he held for many years as chamberlain; his daughter married Nagaie, youngest son of Fujiwara no Michinaga. The Tono no Chūjō is that Nagaie, tono referring to Michinaga himself.

The third month of Jian 1 (1021), when word of the death of the daughter of the Jijū no Dainagon reached the house in the capital. The poem itself had been written out earlier, while the young lady was still alive.

Hearing of the young lady's death, the author took out the specimen of her hand that had been given to her as a writing model soon after her arrival in the capital, and found this poem set down there in a beautiful script, together with a line from an older verse. It is that discovery which brings the poem into the diary.

It is not part of an exchange, and there is no reply. Seeing it only made her tears come the harder, and together with the nurse's death it drained her of any will to read. Her mother's concern at this leads to the scene in which she is given the fifty and more volumes of the Tale of Genji.

The poem is one found in the Shūishū among the laments; the young lady had copied it out as writing practice. The line beside it comes from a summer poem by Mibu no Tadami in the same anthology, on waking in the night to the cuckoo's call.

Toribeyama, east of the capital, was known as a place of cremation, so that the name alone tells the reader that death is the subject. The kemuri of the second line is the smoke of the pyre. In the third line ba attaches to the imperfective and gives a conditional sense: if the smoke should rise. Hakanaku mieshi, "who seemed so frail," uses shi, the attributive of the past auxiliary ki, and describes her living self as it appeared in another's eyes. The closing namu is a final particle expressing a wish directed at someone else: know that it is I. The poem belongs to the type in which one speaks one's own death in advance, and the author came upon it in a young woman's practice sheet. Where "Chiruhanamo matakomuharuwa momoyasemu yagatewakareshi hitozokoishiki" laid death over falling blossom, this one names it through the concrete image of smoke, and the two deaths, set side by side, deepen one another.

Source

Sarashina Nikki

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