Ōsakano sekinosekikaze fukukoewa mukashikikishini kawarazarikeri

English Translation

Here at Ōsaka
the voice of the wind that blows
through the barrier
has not changed at all, I find,
from the voice I heard back then

Meaning

The voice of the wind blowing through the barrier at Ōsaka has not changed at all from the one I heard so long ago.

Commentary

Section 27: Pilgrimage to Ishiyama

Past the twentieth of the twelfth month the author went on pilgrimage to Ishiyama. Snow kept falling, and even the road was lovely. Looking at the barrier of Ōsaka she remembered that it had been winter, too, when she crossed it long ago; and just then the wind blew up very hard. She made a poem on it.
Seeing how grandly the Sekidera had been built, she remembered that on that earlier occasion she had seen only the rough-hewn face of the image, and the passing of the years came home to her. The shore at Uchiide was as she had seen it. Reaching the temple as evening drew on, she purified herself and went up to the hall, and by then no human voice could be heard; the mountain wind seemed fearful, and in the middle of her devotions she fell into a doze.

The author is known only as the daughter of Sugawara no Takasue. The barrier of Ōsaka stood on the boundary between Yamashiro and Ōmi; Ishiyama is the Ishiyamadera in Ōmi; the Sekidera was a temple beside the barrier; and Uchiide is a stretch of the shore of Lake Biwa. When she speaks of crossing it long ago she means the journey up from Kazusa in her thirteenth year, when she passed the barrier in the twelfth month.

Past the twentieth of the twelfth month, on the road to Ishiyama, near the barrier of Ōsaka.

Seeing the barrier through falling snow, she remembered that her earlier crossing had also been in winter, and just then the wind blew up hard. That is what drew the poem.

It is a solitary poem, and no reply is recorded. She goes on past the Sekidera and the shore at Uchiide and reaches Ishiyama as evening comes on.

The first line sets down the place name. Seki no sekikaze is the wind about the barrier, the word for barrier repeated so that the sound falls twice. Koe in the third line treats the wind as though it had a voice, and leads into kikishi below. Mukashi kikishi ni uses shi, the attributive of the past auxiliary ki, for the crossing on the journey up to the capital. The close ends on keri, the note of sudden recognition: it has not changed. To say that only the sound of the wind is as it was is to say that everything else has changed, and the poem faces exactly the prose that follows it, in which the newly rebuilt Sekidera brings home how many years have gone. Decades after "Madoromaji koyoinaradewa itsukamimu kurotonohamano akinoyonotsuki" of the journey up to the capital, the same road becomes the setting of a poem again.

Author

Sugawara no Takasue no Musume

Source

Sarashina Nikki

Other