Aruruumini kazeyorisakini funaideshite ishizunonamito kienamashikaba

English Translation

Out on the wild sea,
had we put out from the shore
before the wind came,
and vanished among the waves
off Ishizu—had we so

Meaning

If we had put out onto that raging sea ahead of the wind, and vanished into the waves off Ishizu—

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.

Winter, on the rise above the harbour called Ōtsu, on the way up from Izumi to the capital.

Hearing the people of the province say that if she had left the harbour that night and reached Ishizu the boat would have been lost without a trace is what drew the poem.

It is a solitary poem, and no reply is recorded. The account of the Izumi journey closes with it, and the next section tells of her husband's appointment and departure.

Aruru umi ni, a syllable long, is the raging sea. Kaze yori saki ni, before the wind got up, takes over exactly the supposition the local people had voiced. Funaide shite is putting out in a boat. Ishizu no nami to says that the travellers would have become the waves themselves off Ishizu. In the close na is the auxiliary of completion and mashi that of counterfactual supposition; mashikaba states only the condition and breaks off. The consequence that mashi ought to complete is never supplied, and the poem stops there—that is its whole point. Rather than express relief at having survived, it supposes the other outcome and halts, so that the horror of what she has just been told remains in the sentence as a break in it. Where "Yukuenaki tabinosoranimo okurenuwa miyakonitemishi ariakenotsuki" in Section 30 consoled the loneliness of the road with the moon, this poem has no consolation in it.

Author

Sugawara no Takasue no Musume

Source

Sarashina Nikki

Other