Furusatoni kakukosohitowa kaerikere awareikanaru wakarenarikemu

English Translation

To the house of old
so it is that people go
turning back and home—
ah, and what kind of parting
can that other one have been

Meaning

So this is how people go back to the house they came from. Ah—what kind of parting was that other one, I wonder.

Commentary

Section 14: The Death of the Sister

On the first day of the fifth month her elder sister died after giving birth. Even the deaths of strangers had struck her from childhood as bitterly sad; that this was her own sister left her grief past speaking. Her mother and the others were all in the room where the body lay, while the author lay down with the two small children left behind as keepsakes, one on either side of her. Moonlight came through a gap in the ruined boarding of the roof and fell on a child's face, and it seemed to her so ill-omened that she covered the child with her sleeve, drew the other close, and lay there sunk in thought.
When the forty-nine days had passed, a kinsman sent word: the dead woman had asked that this be found and sent to her without fail, and though it could not be found at the time, someone had sent it only now, which was a sad thing; and with the message came the tale called The Prince Who Sought the Corpse. It moved her deeply, and she wrote a poem in reply.
Her sister's nurse, saying that there was nothing to keep her there any longer, went weeping back to the house she had come from, and the author sent her a poem, adding that she wished she would stay as a keepsake of the dead. The nurse answered that the water in her inkstone had frozen and nothing could be set down; the author sent another poem, and the nurse replied.
This nurse visited the sister's grave and came away weeping. Hearing of it, the author composed a poem; the woman who had been her stepmother answered it, the kinsman who had sent the tale added one of his own, and her brother, seeing them, composed one too, remembering the night of the funeral.
When the snow had fallen for days on end, the author's thoughts went out to a nun living on Mount Yoshino, and she composed one more poem.

The author is known only as the daughter of Sugawara no Takasue. Her elder sister is the one with whom she read tales in the same house, and she died this year after childbirth; the small nieces left behind are the keepsakes spoken of. The nurse had served the sister. The woman who had been her stepmother is the former court lady who parted from her father and moved elsewhere. The brother attended the sister's funeral. The Prince Who Sought the Corpse is a tale no longer extant, said to have told of a nobleman who searched for the body of a woman he had visited, failed to find it, and took vows in despair of the world.

After the sister's death, as her nurse left for the house she had come from; sent from the house in the capital.

The nurse, saying there was nothing to keep her there any longer, went weeping back to her old home, and the poem was sent after her.

With it the author wrote that she wished the nurse would stay as a keepsake of the dead. The nurse replied that the water in her inkstone had frozen and nothing could be set down.

Furusato in the opening line is the house one came from, here the nurse's old home. In the second line koso is emphatic and binds to the perfective-conditional kaerikere of the third: so this is how people turn back and go home. Keri carries the note of sudden recognition. Aware in the fourth line is the exclamation "ah," and ikanaru wakare narikemu ends on kemu, past conjecture: what kind of parting can that have been? The parting is both the one taking place before her eyes and the death of the sister whom the nurse served, and the poem holds the two together. What it captures is the way loss compounds—first the sister, and now the household emptying after her. Where "Uzumorenu kabaneonanini tazunekemu kokenoshitaniwa mikosonarikere" is turned toward the sister alone, this one takes in the slow collapse of the house she left behind.

Author

Sugawara no Takasue no Musume

Source

Sarashina Nikki

Other