Sabishisawa madaminushimano yamazatoo omoiyarunimo sumukokochishite

English Translation

Loneliness is this:
that a mountain village
on an island unseen,
merely to think of it, gives me
the feeling of living there

Meaning

Loneliness is this: that merely to imagine a mountain village on an island I have never seen gives me the feeling of living there.

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.
In Katei 1 the regent Norizane died in the capital at twenty-six, Michiie returned to the regency for a third time, and the purification and thanksgiving were held that winter. At Oki the retired emperor heard faintly of such things, and as his years mounted his sorrows only thickened. For solace he turned, as he had always done, to the way of poetry.
He sent topics to the capital by whatever means offered and called for poems, and those who remembered him with longing sent theirs, each before the other. Having time on his hands, he judged them himself. Ietaka of the second rank, moved and awed at being granted at least this much while he still lived, gathered the poems of others as well and sent them on. Hideyoshi of old, who had taken the tonsure after the rising and lived in deep seclusion under the name Nyogan, was also summoned to this contest, and must have remembered those former days. The contest is the Ento poetry match, completed in the seventh month of Katei 2, in which sixteen people including the retired emperor each contributed ten poems, making eighty rounds.
This is Ietaka's poem on the right, on the topic of a mountain dwelling, matched against the imperial poem "Nokibaarete tarekaminaseno yadonotsuki sumikoshimamano iroyasabishiki" on the left.
The cloistered emperor wrote the judgement himself, saying that to remember a place one had lived in for years must be a little deeper in feeling than to imagine an island one had never seen, and gave the victory to his own poem. The narrator calls this touching and graceful, and adds that the retired emperor passed his days distracting himself with such trifles and with devotions to Amida.

The first line sets the topic: loneliness is this. The second names an island the poet has never seen, which is Oki, so that the convention of composing on a place one does not know is laid directly over a real separation. The third line answers the topic with a mountain village and carries into the lower lines. The particle in the fourth line means merely to imagine it. At the close, the verb means both to live and to be clear, the same double word used in the imperial poem, so that the two sides of the round share one pivot; the poem breaks off, leaving the feeling suspended. To say that simply imagining an unseen island gives the sense of living there is to state, from the side of imagination, how deep his thought of the exiled sovereign runs. The judgement, that remembering a long-inhabited place is deeper than imagining an unseen one, is a comparison of readings of that same double word, so that the reason for the verdict is itself an account of how the two poems stand to each other.

Author

Fujiwara no Ietaka

Source

Masukagami

Other