Arisowa asaredonanno kainakute ushioninururu amanosodekana

English Translation

On that rough shore, though
I forage, I find no shell
and nothing to show—
only the diver's own sleeves
soaked through and through with the tide

Meaning

However one forages that rough shore there is no shell to find and nothing gained—only the diver's sleeves, soaked through with the tide.

Commentary

Section 31: Those of the Same Mind

With nothing much going against her, and with even long pilgrimages of this kind giving her something to find lovely or hard along the road and so easing her mind, and with the future looking hopeful and nothing immediately to grieve over, her whole wish was to see her small children brought up as she would have them; and thinking so she found the years slow in passing, and lived on the single hope that her husband might come in for a post like anyone else, which was a sustaining sort of hope.
A woman with whom she had once talked intimately and exchanged poems night and day, and with whom, though it was no longer as it had been, she had gone on corresponding without a break, went down as the wife of the governor of Echizen and then fell entirely silent. The author at last found someone to carry a letter, sent a poem, and received a reply.
Early in the third month she went to a place deep in the Western Hills. Not a soul was to be seen, the haze lay peacefully over everything, and in that forlorn stillness the cherry alone was in full bloom. She made a poem.
At a time when things between her and her husband were troublesome, she was in retreat at Uzumasa when a letter came from a lady she was close to at the princess's household; and as she was writing her reply a bell sounded, and she added a poem before sending it.
On a mild, quiet day at the princess's, three of them of the same mind had sat talking; and the next day, at a loose end and remembering it with longing, she sent a poem to the other two, and each of them replied.
A woman with whom she was of one mind, who had exchanged letters with her in this way and shared with her everything hard and painful and pleasant in the world, went down to Chikuzen; and on a night when the moon was very bright, thinking how on such a night she would have gone to the princess's and, meeting her, sat gazing till morning without a moment's sleep, the author fell asleep still longing for her. She dreamed they were together at the princess's exactly as they used to be, and woke with a start to find it a dream. The moon had come down close to the ridge. Wishing she had not woken, she gazed all the harder, and made a poem.

The author is known only as the daughter of Sugawara no Takasue. "The one she depended on" is her husband, Tachibana no Toshimichi; the small children are her own. Of the woman who went down as the wife of the governor of Echizen, the lady at the princess's household, the three of one mind, and the woman who went down to Chikuzen, the text gives neither names nor stations. Echizen is a province on the Japan Sea coast, Shirayama a mountain on the border of Kaga and Echizen, Uzumasa the Kōryūji in the capital, and Chikuzen a province in Kyushu.

The day after the three of them talked at the princess's; a reply to the author's poem.

It answers "Sodenururu arisonamito shirinagara tomonikazukio seshizokoishiki."

After this reply the other woman composes "Mirumeouru uraniarazuwa arisono namimakazouru amamoarajio," and the three poems make one exchange.

The first line takes the ariso of the author's poem unchanged. Asaru in the second is to search about for food or a catch, standing for the labour of court service, and do is concessive. Kai in the third line is a pivot on the worth of an effort and the shell one gathers from the sea, and that one word is the hinge of the whole poem. Ushio in the fourth is the sea tide, and what it soaks is also tears. The poem ends on a noun with the exclamatory kana. Where the author had said that what she longed for was having dived together knowing it was hard, this one answers that no amount of diving brought anything worth having, taking over her seascape entire and turning it toward the unrewardingness of service. Like "Ikuchitabi mizunotazerio tsumishikaba omoishikotono tsuyumokanawanu" in Section 25 it is a poem about effort that comes to nothing, but this one is built out of words borrowed from the poem it answers.

Source

Sarashina Nikki

Other