Ari to dani yoso nite mo mimu na ni shi owaba ware ni kikase yo mimiraku no shima

English Translation

If only I might
see her, even from afar,
and know her still there —
if that is truly your name,
let me hear, Isle of Mimiraku.

Meaning

If only I might see her, even from far off, and know that she is there still — if that is truly your name, then let me hear her, Isle of Mimiraku.

Commentary

17 The Death of Her Mother

Her mother had died, and more than ten days had passed in the mountain temple. Hearing the monks talking among themselves between the invocations, she caught this: that there is a place where the dead may be seen quite plainly; that if one goes near they vanish, but from a distance they are visible; and that it lies in some province or other and is called the Isle of Mimiraku. Listening to them say it, one after another, she longed to know more, and in her grief a poem rose to her lips. Her brother, hearing it, answered her through his tears. Meanwhile Kaneie only looked in without dismounting and asked her people how she did, and she had no heart for anything. At length the day came for them all to leave the temple. When they had come there she had carried her mother, who lay against her knees, hoping only to make her comfortable, and there had been a hope in her that sustained her; now she rode back in perfect ease, absurdly at leisure, and the whole road was misery. Getting down and looking about her was misery past speaking. The plants she and her mother had gone out together to have tended had been left to themselves since the illness began, and had run wild and were blooming in every color. Since the necessary arrangements were all divided among the others, she had nothing to do but sit in idleness and brood, and only a line of old verse kept coming to her lips. Then she composed a poem. Kaneie, thinking perhaps how forlorn she seemed, came more often than before. When something was sent to the temple, she wrote a poem to go with a surplice. And the elder brother of the man who received that surplice was a monk too, one on whose prayers she had relied; hearing that he had suddenly died, she wondered what his brother must feel, and was herself much grieved. Troubled that those she leaned upon should go this way, she sent condolences again and again. For reasons of his own the man had been in service at Unrin'in. When the forty-nine days were over she sent him a poem. So, in the wretchedness of her own heart, her thoughts went out over field and mountain alike.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. The one who died is her mother, whose name the diary does not give. The brother is named in the text by that word alone. Kaneie was the third son of Fujiwara no Morosuke, and would rise to be regent and chancellor. The recipient of the surplice was a monk of the temple; his elder brother was also a monk, in service at Unrin'in.
It is the first year of Kōhō, more than ten days after her mother's death, and the place is the mountain temple.
Hearing the monks talk between the invocations of the Isle of Mimiraku, where the dead are said to be visible from a distance, she longed to know more, and this poem came to her lips out of grief.
Her brother, hearing it, answered through his tears with "Izuko to ka oto ni nomi kiku mimiraku no shimagakure ni shi hito o tazunemu."

The opening means: if only I might know she is there, and its particle expresses the smallest of wishes. The second line means she would see her even from a distance, taking up exactly what the monks had said, that those who approach see nothing. The third means: if that is indeed your name. The name in question is the island's, in which the syllables for ear are heard, and that is what carries the poem into the fourth line: if it bears the name of ear, then let it at least let her hear. The base text writes the island's name with the character for ear, showing the play on the page. The poem closes on the island's name, a noun ending that sharpens the note of address. The wish to see is turned into a demand to be allowed to hear, and the whole is an unguarded piece of feeling, made on the spot out of the monks' idle talk.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other