Kaze dani mo omowanu kata ni yosezaraba kono yo no koto wa kano yo ni mo mimu

English Translation

If only the wind
will not blow him toward some quarter
he never wished for,
then what befalls in this world
I shall watch from the next.

Meaning

If only the wind will not blow him toward some quarter he never wished for, then I shall watch what befalls in this world from the next.

Commentary

36 Illness and the Written Testament

While this was going on, the intercalary fifth month came. From the last day of the month, for whatever reason, she was in great pain, with nothing she could point to, and thought only that it might go as it would. She kept praying that no one should see her clinging to life, but those who saw and heard would not be silent, and there were rites with burnt mustard seed and the rest; still nothing came of it and the days went by. Kaneie, saying he was in a period of purification, did not come as he used to. He was building a new place, and on his way past he would stand without dismounting, say a word or two, and ask how she did. One evening, when she felt her strength failing and her chest tight with sorrow, he sent in a single lotus fruit by a servant on his way back from the other house: it was growing dark, the man said, so he would not come in; this was from over there, and would she look at it. To this she only had the answer given, that he should be told she was alive and not alive, and lay thinking; and it grieved her that the beautiful place he had promised to show her one day would come to nothing, since neither her own span nor another's heart could be known. Then a poem came to her. The days passed and she was no better, and she was afraid. Since she was a woman who thought only that she would be better dead, it was not that she grudged her life by so much as a dewdrop; only when she thought what was to become of her one child could she not hold back her tears. Since her condition must be visibly other than usual, they called in monks of standing and tried what could be done, but nothing at all changed. She might well die like this, she thought; when it comes suddenly one cannot say what one wishes to say; to end so would be a bitter thing; while there is still time one ought to speak, even where minds differ. So, leaning against an armrest, she wrote a testament, in which she wrote at length about Michitsuna, and set two poems into it. When it was done she added a line at the edge, sealed it, wrote on the outside that it was to be shown when the days of abstinence were over, and, shuffling across to the Chinese chest beside her, put it in. Those who saw would think it strange, she says; but if the illness lasted, it would be a bitter thing not even to have done this much.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. Kaneie was the third son of Fujiwara no Morosuke and would rise to be regent and chancellor. The little person entrusted in the testament is her son, Fujiwara no Michitsuna. The rite with burnt mustard seed is an esoteric observance in which mustard seed is cast into the fire.
It is from the end of the intercalary fifth month into the sixth month of the second year of Anna, and the place is the author's dwelling.
It stands in the testament written against the armrest, after the passage saying that it is only the child who weighs on her; that he seems to take it very hard when a chance pleasantry finds his father out of humor; and that Kaneie must not let him see such a face.
She then wrote further, and closed the testament with "Tsuyu shigeki michi to ka itodo shide no yama katsugatsu nururu sode ika ni semu."

The opening means the wind at least, its particle marking the smallest case and shaping the whole as a plea for one thing only. The wind here is an unseen force, and the movement of the other's heart is entrusted to it. The second line means to blow a thing toward a quarter it never wished for, laying over the image of wind driving something the wrong way the fear of a child pushed into a life he would not have chosen. The third sets that as a condition and passes to the second half, which says that she will watch from the next world what happens in this — that is, that she will be looking on after death. The character of the poem lies in its being framed not as a request but as a bargain: grant this, and she will watch in peace; which is to say, in reverse, that if it is not granted she will be watching all the same. Set within a testament, it is a heavy sentence, at once an entrusting and a warning.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other