Ushitomishi arishiwakarewa fujigoromo yagatekirubeki kadodenarikeri

English Translation

That parting long ago,
which I thought hard to bear,
was the setting out
that would bring me before long
to put this mourning robe on

Meaning

That parting I once found so hard was the setting out that would soon bring me to wear this mourning robe.

Commentary

Book Three: Fujigoromo

At that time there lived an old prince whom no one counted. He was Prince Moriada, third son of Takakura and elder brother of the cloistered sovereign at Oki. Long before, when Go-Shirakawa was choosing among his grandsons, this prince had wept, and so had never come to the throne; he lived resentful of the world, and his residence had grown deep in grass and choked with vines. In the Kempo years a woman of his household dreamed that many men in court caps came and said the regalia were to be brought in and that all should make ready, but the prince thought nothing of it and at last took the tonsure. Then came the rising, and all the family of the senior retired emperor were scattered; since no suitable sovereign remained, by the decision of the east the son of this cloistered prince, then ten years old, was suddenly set on the throne on the ninth day of the seventh month of Joukyu 3. The father was given the title of retired sovereign and called cloistered emperor. That a grandson of an emperor should come to the throne had not happened since Konin, and it was thought remarkable. He came of age in the first month of Joo 1; his personal name was Yutahito, and his mother was Kitashirakawain, daughter of the Middle Counselor Motoie. Lord Iezane returned to the regency. In the fifth month of the next year the cloistered emperor died and the whole realm went into mourning. The former emperor had been deposed at four and was not even granted a title; his mother, Higashi Ichijoin, lived in a mountain village and grieved in loneliness. She was the daughter of the late regent Go-Kyogoku Yoshitsune and skilled in the way of poetry, but her nature was reserved, quiet and grave, and even Juntoku, who loved her without limit, had found her too much so. After their far parting she lay sunk in grief, and answered with a poem when a woman who had long served her sent robes for the seasonal change; she wrote another while practising her hand. In the Kanki years Michiie again became regent, his daughter entered the palace as consort, and the world was brilliant. Consorts succeeded one another rapidly, and titles were later given as Akimon'in and Takatsukasain. In Kanki 3 Michiie passed the regency to his son Norizane and became senior lord; his sons held the shogunate in the east, the Tendai abbacy, the Miidera and Yamashina offices and the Ninnaji cloister, a flourishing without precedent. In the eleventh month of that year the retired emperor of Awa died at thirty-seven. Shomeimon'in's grief was without limit, and she wept over the utensils he had used there and the letters from Oki that had been gathered together. Kozaisho, daughter of Ietaka of the second rank, sank deeper than anyone and dyed her mourning robes black, and composed a poem. In Joei 1 the Middle Counselor Teika was charged with a collection and presented it within the year; it is called the Shinchokusen. In the same month Go-Horikawa, gravely ill, abdicated, and his two-year-old son came to the throne. The empress was tormented by spirits and died on the eighteenth day of the ninth month of Tempuku 1 at twenty-five; she is called Sohekimon'in. The Mibu no Kyo no Naishi no Suke, daughter of the Middle Counselor Teika, sank into grief past bearing, took the tonsure, and answered an enquiry with a poem. In the fifth month of Bunryaku 1 the deposed emperor of Joukyu died at seventeen, and on the sixth day of the eighth month Go-Horikawa died at about twenty-three. From the end of the third month of Katei 1 the regent Norizane fell gravely ill and died at twenty-six, so Michiie returned to the regency and governed for a third time; the purification and thanksgiving were held that winter. At Oki the retired emperor heard faintly of such things in the capital, and as his years increased and his sorrows only thickened, he found his one solace in the way of poetry. He sent topics to the capital by whatever means offered and called for poems; Ietaka of the second rank gathered the poems of others as well and sent them, and Hideyoshi, who had taken the tonsure after the rising and called himself Nyogan, answered the summons too. The retired emperor judged the poems himself, and wrote poems of his own while practising his hand. He had lived on that shore some nineteen years when he died on the twenty-second day of the second month of En'o 1, at sixty. His wish to return once to the capital had been deep, but it came to nothing. Yoshimochi of the Northern Guard carried his ashes to the capital about his neck; they were placed in the Lotus Hall at Ohara, and by Shumeimon'in's arrangement the Minase villa was transferred to it. He was at first given the name Kentokuin, but about the Ninji years this was changed and he came to be called Go-Toba In.
Prince Moriada was the third son of Takakura and elder brother of Go-Toba; he later received the title of retired sovereign and was called cloistered emperor. His son was the reigning emperor Go-Horikawa, whose mother was Kitashirakawain, daughter of the Middle Counselor Motoie. Higashi Ichijoin, mother of the former emperor deposed after the Joukyu rising, was the daughter of the late regent Go-Kyogoku Yoshitsune and the consort of Juntoku, who had been moved to Sado. Shomeimon'in was the mother of the retired emperor of Awa, that is Tsuchimikado. Michiie of Komyobuji served as regent and chancellor; his wife was the daughter of Lord Kintsune, his son was the regent Norizane of Toin, and his daughter was the empress Sohekimon'in. Lord Iezane was the son of the Fugenji lord and alternated in the regency with Michiie. The daughter of the Chancellor Kimifusa of Sanjo was later called Akimon'in, and Iezane's daughter Takatsukasain. Kozaisho was the daughter of Ietaka of the second rank, and the Mibu no Kyo no Naishi no Suke the daughter of the Middle Counselor Teika. Hideyoshi took the tonsure after the rising and called himself Nyogan; Yoshimochi served in the Northern Guard, became a monk, and attended the retired emperor in exile.
On the eleventh day of the eleventh month of Kanki 3 the retired emperor of Awa, that is Tsuchimikado, died. Feeling himself unwell he had taken the tonsure, and after long brooding he was thirty-seven that year. That he had gone without seeing the capital once more was grieved over even on the small island of Oki.
His mother Shomeimon'in, who had seen every kind of sorrow and already found her own long life hateful, was left with a grief past speaking when he departed even this same world, and burned with the thought of why she had not gone first. Among the things sent up to the capital were the utensils he had used there and the letters that had come now and then from Oki, together with her own messages, all gathered into one, and at the sight her eyes clouded over. Kozaisho, daughter of Ietaka of the second rank, who served the retired emperor and had perhaps grown familiar with him, sank deeper than anyone and dyed her mourning robes black. This poem belongs to that occasion.
The title of this book comes from the third line. The narrative then moves to the compiling of the Shinchokusen wakashu in Joei 1.

The first line, that I thought hard to bear, gives the feeling of the earlier parting. The second names that parting, when Tsuchimikado went down to Tosa. The third line is the coarse robe of wisteria fibre, which is to say mourning dress, and the poem sets it as a noun and breaks there. In the lower lines the adverb means directly or before long, and the closing noun is a setting out from home; the poem declares that the parting was, after all, the departure that would bring her to this robe. The exclamatory auxiliary marks a recognition arriving only now. What at the time seemed no more than hard becomes, seen from later, the very sign of a final separation, so that meaning is settled across an interval of time, and the past of the upper lines is joined to the present of the lower by the single word for setting out. The movement runs backward from the act before her, dyeing a robe, to a parting more than ten years earlier, and the book takes its title from this mourning robe.

Author

Kozaisho

Source

Masukagami

Other