Ukiyoniwa kakaretotekoso umarekeme kotowarishiranu waganamidakana

English Translation

Into this sad world
I must have been born to be
just as I am now—
yet knowing nothing of that reason,
these tears of mine keep falling

Meaning

It must be that I was born into this bitter world to be just as I am; yet my tears, which know nothing of such reasoning, keep falling.

Commentary

Book Two: Niijimamori

The narrative traces the rise of the warriors: the two lines of Minamoto and Taira had served in turn as guardians of the court. The Taira descended from Emperor Kammu, and after Kiyomori's house was destroyed the line of Koretoki sank wholly into the common people, so that only Taira no Shiro Tokimasa remained, in the district of Hojo in Izu. On the Minamoto side, Yoritomo, eighth in descent from Emperor Seiwa, had been exiled to Hirugashima in Izu after the Heiji disturbance; the Cloistered Emperor Go-Shirakawa, harassed by the Taira, summoned him and had him raise an army. The Taira were scattered in the autumn winds of Juei, and Yoritomo, though he stayed at Kamakura, held the realm in the palm of his hand. Going up to the capital at the beginning of the Kenkyu era he was met at the post station of Hashimoto in Totomi by courtesans and exchanged linked verse with them; made Provisional Major Counselor and Commander of the Right, he resigned the offices at once, and taking the post of chief constable of the provinces he installed his own warriors as land stewards. The narrator judges that the decline of this country began here. As he was going back east, the Yoshimizu bishop, who had long prayed for him, sent him a poem, and Yoritomo replied. In the first month of Shoji 1 Yoritomo died at fifty-three. His son Yoriie succeeded him but proved unsettled, lost the warriors' loyalty, was killed at Shuzenji, and his young son Ichiman was destroyed as well. Sanetomo then rose without hindrance in rank and office, and while worshipping at the Hachiman shrine as Minister of the Right he was cut down by Kugyo, Yoriie's son, on the twenty-seventh day of the first month of Joukyu 1. With no heir, his mother the Lady of Second Rank, Masako, served in the shogun's place, and in time the two-year-old son of Kujo Michiie was sent down to Kamakura, so that everything lay in Yoshitoki's hands. About this time the retired emperor was secretly forming a design, and those who served near him thought of nothing but bows and arrows. In the fourth month of Joukyu 3 the emperor abdicated to the four-year-old crown prince. The design gradually leaked out, and the eastern deputy Iga no Hangan Mitsusue was attacked and cut his belly. In the east, Yoshitoki sent a great host up to the capital under his brother Tokifusa and his eldest son Yasutoki. Yasutoki turned back alone on the road to ask his father what should be done if the imperial palanquin were set at the head of the enemy; Yoshitoki answered that if the sovereign came out in person they should take off their helmets, cut their bowstrings and submit, but that otherwise they should fight to the death. In the capital the bridges of Uji and Seta were broken down, rites past counting were performed, and the retired emperor went secretly to the Hie shrine, where a god possessing a child declared that because of an old grievance over the carrying of the sacred palanquin he could not take his side this time. Past the tenth day of the sixth month, with scarcely a battle, the imperial forces were beaten. After the rising, the senior retired emperor Go-Toba was moved to Oki and the new retired emperor Juntoku to Sado, and the emperor was set aside after little more than seventy days. The middle retired emperor Tsuchimikado had had no part in it, but thinking it presumptuous to remain quietly in the capital while his father was carried so far away, he asked to go down to Tosa, and was later moved to Awa. The dwelling at Oki stood on an island far from any village, with a gallery of pine pillars thatched with reeds, stripped of ornament yet made elegant in its way, looking out over a wide stretch of sea. There the retired emperor composed poems with the seasons, exchanged letters with Shichijoin and with Ietaka, and had the poems of those months gathered and sent to Shumeimon'in.
Minamoto no Yoritomo was eighth in descent from Emperor Seiwa, grandson of Tameyoshi the Rokujo Magistrate and third son of Yoshitomo, Master of the Left Horse Bureau. His wife was the daughter of Hojo no Shiro Tokimasa, and their sons were Yoriie and Sanetomo; Kugyo was Yoriie's son. Tokimasa's sons were Munetoki and Yoshitoki; Yoshitoki's brother was Tokifusa and his eldest son Yasutoki. The Lady of Second Rank, Masako, was Yoritomo's wife and the mother of Yoriie and Sanetomo. The Yoshimizu bishop Jien was a poet-monk who long held the office of Tendai abbot. Go-Toba's mother was Shichijoin, Juntoku's was Shumeimon'in, and Tsuchimikado's was Shomeimon'in. The father of the boy sent down to Kamakura was the Minister of the Left Kujo Michiie, whose wife was the daughter of Lord Kintsune; Kintsune's own wife was the daughter of the Middle Counselor Yoshiyasu of Ichijo, whose mother was Yoritomo's sister. Ietaka of the second rank was among those called to compile the Shinkokinshu and was employed intimately by the retired emperor in the way of poetry. Iga no Hangan Mitsusue was in the capital as the deputy of the east.
After the rising, the middle retired emperor Tsuchimikado had known nothing of the design from the first, and the east brought no charge against him. But thinking it altogether presumptuous to remain quietly in the capital when his father had been carried so far away, he went of his own will, on the tenth day of the intercalary tenth month of that year, to a place called Hata in the province of Tosa.
His son had been born about the second month of the year before, to the daughter of the Consultant and Middle Captain Michimune, elder brother of Shomeimon'in, who had died young. Leaving the child at the house of Michikata, that consultant's younger brother, and attended only by one low-ranking guardsman who had served near him and a few servants, he went down in a very poor hand-litter. On the road snow darkened the sky and the wind blew wildly, so that neither the way behind nor the way ahead could be seen, his sleeves froze hard, and there was much that was hard to bear. This poem was composed on that journey.
The east petitioned that he be moved at least somewhat nearer, and he was afterwards transferred to the province of Awa. It is said later that after his abdication he passed twelve years as the retired emperor of Tosa.

The first line names this bitter world. In the second line the imperative form, be thus, is bound by an emphatic particle to the perfective conjecture at the close of the third: he must have been born to be as he now is, and he takes his condition as something fixed by past causes. The upper lines reach an understanding by reasoning; the lower lines turn away from it to the tears that fall without knowing that reason. The word for reason is the logic of things, and the poem holds in itself the gap between a mind that has accepted and a body that has not. The final particle is one of feeling. Set beside the fact that he had no part in the rising and asked for exile himself, the restraint of a poem that makes no complaint and no appeal, and lets only the tears fall outside reason, matches the man described as refined and easy by nature.

Author

Tsuchimikado In

Source

Masukagami

Other