Imamomata mukashiokakeba masukagami furinuruyoyono atonikasanen

English Translation

Now once again
the past is being written,
so this clear mirror
I would lay upon the traces
of the aged generations

Meaning

Since the past is being set down once more, let this clear mirror be laid on the record of those worn old generations.

Commentary

Preface

On the fifteenth of the second month, the day of the Nirvana rite, the narrator visits Seiryoji temple in Saga to worship the Shaka Buddha. An old nun leans on a dove-headed staff and comes to pray beside her. Complaining of a sore back, she sends her young attendant away to the lodging, repeats the Buddha's name again and again, and, gazing at the sun as it slips toward the ridge, murmurs that it feels like her own life. Something graceful in her manner suggests a woman of feeling, and the narrator draws near and speaks to her. Asked her age, she says she has passed a hundred years by a wide margin, and remarks that through all the upheavals of the age this temple alone has come to no harm; her way of speaking is old-fashioned and refined. The narrator asks to hear stories of the past, invoking the old man of the Bodhi service at Unrin-in and the tale of the white-haired one. The nun demurs, saying her eyes and ears have grown dim, but when the narrator counts over the books she has read—Mizukagami, Okagami, Yotsugi, Imakagami, Iyayotsugi—and asks to hear what came after them, the nun agrees to tell what she can, brokenly, and asks that her errors be corrected.
The old nun's name and family are never given; she says only that she has passed a hundred. The narrator too remains unnamed. The old man of the Bodhi service at Unrin-in refers to Oyake no Yotsugi of the Okagami; the tale of the white-haired one refers to the Imakagami; and Iyayotsugi is the book attributed to Lord Takanobu, Fujiwara no Takanobu.
The time is dusk on the fifteenth of the second month; the place is a cell at Seiryoji in Saga.
The nun has asked not to be measured against the old works. The narrator answers that the nun must intend her words to be written down and made equal to the image of the past, and returns this poem.
The exchange closes the preface, and from here begins the nun's account of the age of Go-Toba and after.

The first line sets the present beside the past: as others once wrote, so now again. The particle in the second line gives the reason—since the past is being written down. The third line takes back the title from the previous poem: what the nun used as a word of humility the narrator turns into a word of pride. The verb for growing old carries the sound of both aging and falling, and leads into the lower lines. The traces are at once the strokes of the brush and the footsteps of those who went before, and the closing auxiliary expresses will. Where the earlier poem broke off with a negative, this one ends with a resolve, turning the refusal of comparison into an offer to be set alongside; that is the correspondence proper to an exchange.

Source

Masukagami

Other