Oshiekeru tsuki wa nishi e zo yuku saki wa ware nomi koso wa shiru bekarikere

English Translation

Let me teach you this:
the moon goes west, and always
westward; as for where
you are bound, that is a thing
only I could be said to know.

Meaning

Let me teach you: the moon goes west, and always west. As for where you are bound, that is a thing only I could be said to know.

Commentary

16 She Feels the Frailty of a Wife's Position

In the first year of Kōhō, when spring had passed and summer come, Kaneie took to lodging at the palace on night duty. He would come at dawn, stay through the day, and at nightfall go back again; and while she was puzzling over this, the first cry of the evening cicada was heard. Deeply moved, she spoke a poem, and he too, no doubt, found it hard to leave. Since nothing came of it, however, his heart slackened again as before. On a moonlit night, when they had been talking of trifles and there came back to her the time when they had spoken together of things that touched the heart, she said a poem; and the reply came as if in jest. He seemed dependable enough, and yet the place he appeared to regard as his own home was elsewhere, so that the world proved altogether other than she had wished. For a woman with good fortune, it is no rare thing to keep a husband of many years and to have many children; while she was left with nothing certain, and only her thoughts multiplied.
Kaneie was the third son of Fujiwara no Morosuke, and at this time lodged at the palace on frequent night duty; he would rise to be regent and chancellor. The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. The place he appeared to regard as his own home is the other house he kept as his base.
It is a moonlit night in the first year of Kōhō, and the place is the author's dwelling.
It came back, as if in jest, to her question as to which was the more uncertain, the moon on a clouded night or her own future.
The narrative takes up this reply with the remark that he seemed dependable enough, and then goes on: the place he appeared to regard as his own home was elsewhere, so that the world proved altogether other than she had wished.

He takes back her moon and her future. The opening means: let me teach you — assuming the manner of an instructor toward a poem cast as a question. The second line says that the moon's course is westward and settled, its emphatic particle governing what follows. The third line restates her word for what is to come, and from here it refers no longer to the moon but to her own prospects. The close declares that he alone could be said to know them, the emphatic particle sharpening the assertion; the sense is that she need not worry over her future, since he has it in hand, and the verb of knowing may be heard to sound the word for a guide who shows the way. As the narrative is careful to say, the answer came as if in jest — a grave question lightly turned aside; and that lightness rings all the more against the sentence which follows, that the house he thought of as his own was somewhere else.

Author

Fujiwara no Kaneie

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other