Otoninomi kikiwatarikoshi ujigawano ajirononamimo kyōzokazouru

English Translation

Only by report
had it come to me till now—
and today I count
with my own eyes the breaking
waves at the weirs of Uji

Meaning

The Uji River, which until now had come to me only by hearsay—today I count with my own eyes the waves breaking at its weirs.

Commentary

Section 28: Pilgrimage to Hatsuse

On the twenty-fifth of the tenth month of the following year, while the whole city was in an uproar over the purification for the Great Thanksgiving, the author began her abstinence for a pilgrimage to Hatsuse and left the capital on that very day. People of consequence reproached and even laughed at her: it was a spectacle that came once in a reign, one that even country folk came up to see, and there were days enough in the year without choosing that one to leave town. Her brother, however, said that if she was so set on it she should go, and saw her off. She was sorry for her attendants, who plainly regretted missing the show, but she thought: what would watching it come to? The Buddha will surely pity a heart so resolved, and the blessing will certainly follow.
Passing the house of the man called Yoshiyori, Commander of the Military Guards, where the gates stood wide open and people were standing about—he must have been setting out for his viewing stand—she heard them laugh that this was evidently someone off on a pilgrimage, and on such a day of all days. Among them, though, was one person of some understanding who said in earnest that feasting the eyes for a single hour comes to nothing; that here was someone resolved enough to be certain of the Buddha's grace; that it was the watching that was pointless, and that this was how one ought to set one's mind.
Having left the city deep in the night, the party was tired and rested a while at the great gate of the Hosshōji. Coming at last to the crossing at Uji, they found people there too shouting and struggling over the boats. The author's first thought was that this must be near the place where the Uji Commander of the tale hid the lady away; and looking out over the river she made a poem.

The author is known only as the daughter of Sugawara no Takasue. Yoshiyori, Commander of the Military Guards, is Minamoto no Yoshiyori. The Great Thanksgiving is the first harvest festival of a new reign, and its purification, in which the emperor cleansed himself in the Kamo River, was held to be an event of once in a reign. Hatsuse is the Hasedera in Yamato, the Hosshōji a temple south of the capital, and Uji the crossing of the Uji River in Yamashiro. The "Uji Commander" is Captain Kaoru of the Tale of Genji, who in the Uji chapters hid a lady away there.

The twenty-fifth day of the tenth month, Eishō 1 (1046), at the Uji crossing in Yamashiro, reached after leaving the capital deep in the night.

Amid the shouting of people struggling for boats, she thought first that this must be near where the Uji Commander of the tale hid his lady, and saw for the first time the river she had known only by name. That is what drew the poem.

It is a solitary poem, and no reply is recorded. The party goes on past Kurikomayama and the wood of Hahaso toward Hatsuse, and the days of retreat follow.

Oto ni nomi is "only by report," oto being rumour or reputation. In the second line wataru is an auxiliary verb meaning to go on doing a thing continuously, but with Ujigawa below it the sense of crossing a river sounds through it, and the shi of koshi is the attributive of the past auxiliary ki. The third line sets the place name. Ajiro in the fourth is the fence of bamboo and wood set in the river in winter to catch ice-fish. The close binds the emphatic zo to the attributive kazouru: today I count them. The feeling of seeing at last what she had only heard of is converted into the concrete act of counting waves, and wataru, kawa, ajiro and nami run on together as associated words. As the prose says, her first thought was of the Uji Commander of the Tale of Genji and the lady he hid there: for her this was a place out of a tale, and seeing it in fact is what stands behind the verse.

Author

Sugawara no Takasue no Musume

Source

Sarashina Nikki

Other