Izuko to ka oto ni nomi kiku mimiraku no shimagakure ni shi hito o tazunemu

English Translation

Where, I wonder, where —
that isle of Mimiraku
we know by report
alone: how shall I seek out
one who has gone behind it?

Meaning

And where is it, this Mimiraku we know only by report? How shall I go seeking one who has passed behind that island?

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.
Her brother, hearing the poem she had addressed to the Isle of Mimiraku, answered it through his tears.
After this exchange comes the day of their departure from the temple for the capital, and the sight of the neglected garden leads to "Te furene to hana wa sakari ni narinikeri todome okikeru tsuyu ni kakarite."

He takes back her island unchanged. The opening asks where it may be, beginning from the grief of not even knowing where the place lies. Where she had called out to the island, he returns to the question of its whereabouts, gently drawing back a mind that had begun to lean on a phantom. The second line means known by report only and never seen, and its word for report keeps the association with the ear that her own poem had raised. The fourth line means having gone behind the island, but the phrase also serves plainly for one who has died and vanished from sight. The close declares that he will go seeking that person, and the contradiction of setting out to seek where no direction is known becomes the grief itself. A sister calls out and a brother asks back: the mourning of two children for the same mother is contained in a single exchange.

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other