Koshinobio kikunitsuketemo todomeokishi chichibunoyamano tsurakiazumaji

English Translation

Hearing that one word,
Koshinobi, I think of
how he left me here
and went past the Chichibu
hills—that cruel eastern road

Meaning

Whenever I hear that name, Longing for a Child, I resent the eastern road that took you past the hills of Chichibu and left me here.

Commentary

Section 19: Retreat at Uzumasa; a Letter from the Father

Around the eighth month, on her way to a retreat at Uzumasa by the First Avenue, the author passed two men's carriages drawn up at the roadside, evidently waiting for someone who was to go on with them. As she went by, a man got up like an escort was sent over to say that he saw her going out to view the flowers. Since her companion said it would be graceless not to answer so elegant a sally, she had only an upper verse sent back, and went on her way.
Through the seven days of her retreat her mind was on nothing but her father in the east; she managed, barely, to leave off the idle imaginings her tales had bred in her, and prayed that she might be brought safely together with him again. Surely the Buddha heard so pitiable a prayer.
In winter, on a night after rain had fallen all day, a wind that sweeps the clouds away blew hard, the sky cleared, the moon came out very bright, and the reeds near the eaves were battered by the wind and broke and scattered so pitifully that she made a poem.
A messenger came from the east. Her father wrote that while making the round of the shrines that a governor performs on taking up his post, he had come upon a wide field with water running prettily through it and a stand of trees; thinking what a fine place it was and how sorry he was that he could not show it to her, he asked what it was called, and was told it was the Grove of Longing for a Child. The name went to his heart so painfully that he got down from his horse and sat gazing there for two hours; and he set down a poem. What it was like to read this needs no saying. The author answered with a poem of her own.

The author is known only as the daughter of Sugawara no Takasue. Her father was appointed governor of Hitachi in Chōgen 5 (1032) and wrote to her from his province. Of the owner of the carriage and his messenger the text gives neither name nor station. Uzumasa is the Kōryūji in the capital, a well-known place of retreat. The shrine circuit is the round of the province's shrines that a governor makes on first taking office.

When the letter arrived from the east; at the house in the capital.

It answers "Todomeokite wagagotomonoya omoikemu mirunikanashiki koshinobinomori," which she read in her father's letter.

The section closes with this exchange. The author waits in the capital through the years that pass before her father's term ends and he comes home.

Koshinobi o takes the name of the grove from her father's letter unchanged. Kiku ni tsuketemo is "every time I hear it." Todome okishi in the third line runs long and takes up the todome okite of his opening; shi is the attributive of the past auxiliary ki, and the phrase names his leaving her in the capital. In the fourth line Chichibu is the mountain in the east, but it contains the sound of chichi, father, and works as a pivot that lays the distant hills over the man himself. The close ends on a noun, resenting the eastern road itself. Where the father found his own heart in a place called Longing for a Child, the daughter finds her father in a place called Chichibu, taking over his device of entrusting feeling to a name and sending it back. His poem speaks from the side of the parent who longs for the child, hers from the side of the child left behind, and the two make one exchange. Unlike "Akioikani omoiizuramu fuyufukami arashinimadou oginokarehawa" earlier in the section, which reached toward the distance through an image, this one says plainly that it is hard to bear.

Author

Sugawara no Takasue no Musume

Source

Sarashina Nikki

Other