Namidasae furihaetsutsuzo omoiyaru arashifukuramu fuyunoyamazato

English Translation

Even my tears fall
as I go out of my way
to think of you there
where the storms must now be loud
in your village in winter

Meaning

Even my tears fall as I go out of my way to think of you—your mountain village in winter, where the storms must be loud now.

Commentary

Section 21: The Pilgrimage of the Mirror to Hatsuse; Amaterasu Ōmikami

The author's mother had a mirror a foot across cast, and since she could not take her daughter herself, sent a monk in her stead on pilgrimage to Hatsuse. He was to keep vigil three days and pray that the girl's future be shown in a dream, and while he was gone the author too was made to observe abstinence. On his return the monk reported this. Unwilling to come away without a dream, he had prayed with all his strength and lain down, and from the direction of the curtained altar a woman of the utmost dignity and purity appeared, holding out the mirror that had been offered, and asked whether a written petition had come with it. He answered respectfully that there had been none, only instructions to present the mirror. Strange, she said; a petition should have been added—and then: look at the image reflected on this side, it is a grief to see. Looking, he saw a figure flung down weeping and lamenting. She showed him the other side: blinds rolled up brightly, the hems of many-coloured robes spilling from beneath a curtain of state, plum and cherry blooming in the garden and a warbler calling among the branches; and she said that this was a joy to see. At the time the author gave no thought to what the dream might mean for her, and let it pass.
There was also someone who kept telling her to put her faith in Amaterasu Ōmikami. Where does such a deity reside, she wondered, and is it a god or a buddha; and as her understanding grew she asked, and was told: a god, residing at Ise; the deity the provincial governor of Kii serves is this same one; and the deity kept as a guardian at the Naishidokoro is the same. Ise being out of the question, and the Naishidokoro no place she could go to worship, she supposed vaguely that she must simply pray to the light of the sky.
When a kinswoman took vows and entered Shugakuin, the author sent her a poem in winter, and an answer came back.

The author is known only as the daughter of Sugawara no Takasue. Her mother was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu and a younger half-sister of the author of the Kagerō Nikki. Her father was at his post in Hitachi at this time. Of the kinswoman who took vows and entered Shugakuin the text gives neither name nor station. Hatsuse is the Hasedera in Yamato, the Naishidokoro the hall where the sacred mirror is kept in the palace, and Shugakuin a temple northeast of the capital.

In winter; sent from the house in the capital to the kinswoman shut away at Shugakuin.

Her kinswoman's taking vows and entering Shugakuin is the occasion of the poem.

The answer came back: "Waketetou kokoronohodono miyurukana kokageoguraki natsunoshigerio." The section closes with this exchange, and in the next her father returns from Hitachi.

The sae of the first line is an additive particle: not only her thoughts but her tears as well. In the second line furihau means to do a thing deliberately, to go out of one's way, and the sense of tears falling is folded into its furi, so that the namida of the first line leads straight into it. Zo is emphatic, bound to the attributive omoiyaru. In the fourth line ramu is the auxiliary of present conjecture, reaching toward what cannot be seen: the storms must be blowing there now. The poem ends on a noun, setting down at the last the place where the other woman is. Turning one's heart toward someone gone into the mountains is the same posture as "Yukifurite marenohitomemo taenuramu yoshinonoyamano minenokakemichi" in Section 14; but that poem was solitary, while this one is sent, and draws a reply.

Author

Sugawara no Takasue no Musume

Source

Sarashina Nikki

Other