Noborikemu nobewakemurimo nakarikemu izukoohakato tazunetekamishi

English Translation

Where it rose, the smoke,
on that moor no smoke was left,
surely, even then—
so what place did she mark out
and find, and call it a grave

Meaning

On the moor where the smoke must have risen, surely no smoke was left by then; how did she find the place and know it for a grave?

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.

When the nurse had visited the sister's grave and come away weeping; at the house in the capital.

Word that the nurse, back at her old home, had gone to the grave and returned in tears is what drew the poem.

Hearing it, the woman who had been her stepmother answered with "Sokohakato shiriteyukanedo sakinitatsu namidazomichino shirubenarikeru," and after her the kinsman who had sent the tale, and then the author's brother, joined the exchange.

In the opening line kemu is past conjecture: the smoke of the pyre will have risen there. Nobe is the ground of burial, kemuri the smoke of cremation, and nakarikemu in the third line again conjectures about the past—by then not even the smoke can have remained. In the fourth line haka is a pivot, both a mark or bearing and a grave. The close binds the interrogative ka to the attributive shi: with the smoke gone and nothing to go by, what place did she settle on and find? The fact that nothing at all was left of her sister is set down not as reproach but as something to be verified, and tazunu, the verb of the tale's own title, comes round again. The theme raised in "Uzumorenu kabaneonanini tazunekemu kokenoshitaniwa mikosonarikere"—that one may search and find nothing—is here transferred onto an actual grave.

Author

Sugawara no Takasue no Musume

Source

Sarashina Nikki

Other