Ikaniii naninitatoete kataramashi akinoyūbeno sumiyoshinoura

English Translation

How am I to speak,
to what shall I liken it
in the telling—this,
an autumn evening upon
the bay of Sumiyoshi

Meaning

How am I to say it, to what shall I liken it, if I am to tell of this—an autumn evening on the bay of Sumiyoshi?

Commentary

Section 32: Izumi

For reasons that had to be met, she went down to Izumi in autumn. From about Yodo onward, the loveliness and feeling of the road were more than can be told.
On the night they stopped at a place called Takahama, in deep darkness and late in the night, the sound of oars was heard. Someone asked, and it proved to be women of the boats. The party was delighted and had them brought alongside. In the light of a distant fire, with the long sleeves of their unlined robes and their fans held up to hide their faces, they sang, and it was very moving to see.
The next day, as the sun came down on the ridge, they passed the bay of Sumiyoshi. Sky and sea were misted into one, and the pine tops, the face of the water, and the shoreline where the waves came in were lovelier than any painting could reach. She made a poem, and while the boat was towed on past she kept looking back and could not have enough of it.
Going up to the capital in winter, they boarded at a harbour called Ōtsu, and that night rain and wind came on hard enough to move the rocks, thunder crashed, and the noise of the waves coming in and the wildness of the wind were so terrible that she thought her life was over. The boat was hauled up onto a rise and they passed the night there. The rain stopped but the wind held, and no boat put out; they spent five or six days on that rise with nowhere to go. When the wind at last eased a little and she rolled up the boat's blind to look, the evening tide came flooding in without pause, and the cranes of the inlet crying with all their voices were a fine sight. People of the province came round and said that if she had left the harbour that night and reached Ishizu, this boat of hers would have been lost without a trace—which was a forlorn thing to hear, and she made a poem on it.

The author is known only as the daughter of Sugawara no Takasue. Izumi is a province of the home provinces, Yodo a place on the Yodo River in Yamashiro, and Takahama, Sumiyoshi, Ōtsu and Ishizu all coastal places in Izumi and Settsu. Of the women of the boats and the people of the province, the text gives neither names nor stations.

Autumn; the day after stopping at Takahama, passing the bay of Sumiyoshi as the sun came down on the ridge.

Sky and sea misted into one, the pine tops, the water and the shoreline finer than any painting could reach: that sight drew the poem.

It is a solitary poem, and no reply is recorded. The prose adds that while the boat was towed on she kept looking back and could not have enough of it.

The first two lines are a matched pair setting one means of expression beside another—finding words, and finding something to compare it with—and by naming both they show that neither will serve. Kataramashi ends on mashi, the auxiliary of hesitant supposition: how would one tell it? The fourth line gives the time and the fifth the place, and the poem closes on a noun. The upper half is a question about language and the lower half the thing language is to be applied to; not one word describes the scene. Answering the prose remark that no painting could reach it, the poem too gives up depicting, so that the fully described prose and the description-refusing verse work as a pair. Since "Madoromaji koyoinaradewa itsukamimu kurotonohamano akinoyonotsuki" in the first part the author has often made poems of coastal scenes on the road; this one stands furthest from the scene, and takes language itself for its subject.

Author

Sugawara no Takasue no Musume

Source

Sarashina Nikki

Other