Mirumeouru uraniarazuwa arisono namimakazouru amamoarajio

English Translation

Were it not a bay
where the seaweed grows, and where
eyes may meet, no one
would be counting the waves there
on the rough shore—no diver

Meaning

If it were not a bay where the seaweed grows—where eyes may meet—no diver would be there at all, counting the waves of that rough shore.

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; the reply of the third woman.

It is the second answer to the author's "Sodenururu arisonamito shirinagara tomonikazukio seshizokoishiki."

With these three poems the exchange over that quiet day of talk comes to an end.

Mirume in the first line is a pivot on the name of a seaweed and on "a sight of someone," a chance of meeting, and the whole poem turns on that word. In the second line zu wa frames a condition: if it were not such a bay. Ariso in the third takes up the word shared by the two earlier poems. Nami ma kazouru, counting the gaps between waves, is watching for the moment to dive—that is, going on with unrewarded labour. In the close ji is the auxiliary of negative conjecture and o an exclamatory particle: there would be no diver there at all. Answering the complaint that no amount of foraging brings anything, she retorts that divers keep to that shore because it is a bay where one may see someone; and with the single word mirume the pointless labour is reread as labour undertaken for the sake of meeting. All three poems share the word ariso and develop it three ways—longing, unrewardingness, and the reason for coming all the same—an exchange well made among women of one mind.

Source

Sarashina Nikki

Other