Yo no naka no yo no naka naraba natsukusa no shigeki yamabe mo tazunezaramashi

English Translation

If the world were still
the world that a world should be,
I should never have
come seeking you in hills where
the summer grasses grow thick.

Meaning

If the world were still the world a world should be, I should never have come seeking you in hills where the summer grasses grow thick.

Commentary

54 The Retreat at Narutaki

On the fourth of the sixth month, setting out before Kaneie's period of abstinence was over, she went to the temple at Narutaki in the western hills and shut herself up there. Kaneie came to fetch her and she would not go; letters passed, and life at the mountain temple went on. Her sister visited, Kaneie's messenger came, she hardened a sorrowful resolve, and another letter came from him. Letters of inquiry arrived one after another, and though she answered them the next day, the time went by while she turned over such thoughts as that she did not mean to stay shut up forever. She put that state of mind into a poem and sent it to one who had written. An answer came. Then, to the gentlewomen on night duty, someone who had once served in that office sent a poem, saying that they too must be attending their mistress with heavy hearts, and that there is a poem about how high and low alike have their risings and fallings. Hearing of it from the woman, the author told her to answer quickly, and she replied that seeing their mistress holding back her tears made them all wretched. Later a relative came to call, and the next day sent the things needed for a long stay away from home, adding that it must have been hard to come all that way to a mountain temple, with two poems. The author wrote back with great care and returned two poems of her own. Afterward letters passed with Tōshi, and a poem came also from an ascetic of the temple who had crossed the Ōmine range from Mitake to Kumano. In time Michitaka called, her father Tomoyasu came for her, and at last she came down from the mountain when Kaneie came to fetch her.
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. Narutaki is a place in the western hills of the capital, where the temple stood. The one who sent the letter of inquiry, the former attendant on night duty, the gentlewoman, the relative and the ascetic are none of them named in the text.
It is the sixth month of the second year of Tenroku, and the place is the mountain temple at Narutaki.
A relative came to call, and the next day sent the things needed for a long stay away from home, adding that it must have been hard to come all that way to a mountain temple; this is the first of the two poems that came with them.
The second is "Yo no naka wa omoi no hoka ni narutaki no fukaki yamaji o tare shirasekemu." The author wrote back with great care and returned two poems of her own.

The first two lines repeat the same phrase — if the world were the world — and by that repetition state in one breath the distance between what should be and what is. The third names the summer grasses, which give the scene of the hills and, by the very sense of thick growth, suggest what obstructs a road. The fourth means the hillside where those grasses grow rank, that is, where the author now is. The close is a counterfactual: I should not have come seeking. If the world were as it ought to be, the poem says, neither would she be in these hills nor would he have had to come so far; it neither reproaches the retreat nor consoles it, but turns the grief upon the world that made it necessary. Coming as it did with a delivery of supplies, it makes a visit complete in both act and word, and answers the accompanying remark about the hardship of the mountain road.

Source

Kagero Nikki

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