Ōeyama koete Ikuno no sue tōmi michi aru yo ni mo ai ni keru kana

English Translation

Past Mount Ōe,
crossing over, Ikuno's plain
stretches far ahead—
an age where the Way is kept,
how glad I am to have met!

Meaning

Crossing Mount Ōe, the road to Ikuno stretches far ahead; so too have I come to meet an age in which the right Way prevails.

Commentary

Book Seven Felicitation Poems 752

Headnote: "Composed on Ikuno as the entry music on the Day of the Dragon for the Suki side at the Great Thanksgiving Festival of Heiji 1."
This is the sixth poem of the sequence of Great Thanksgiving Festival poems. The road over Mount Ōe to Ikuno stretches far, and the speaker rejoices at having met an age in which the right Way prevails. According to the headnote, it was composed on Ikuno as the entry music on the Day of the Dragon for the Suki province at the Great Thanksgiving Festival of Heiji 1.
The author served as Minister of Justice and wrote the poetic treatise Waka dōmōshō.
The scene is the Great Thanksgiving Festival of Heiji 1, and the place is the road to Ikuno in Tanba Province.
The direct occasion is the composition on a place name of Tanba Province, designated as the Suki province for the Great Thanksgiving Festival of Emperor Nijō in Heiji 1 (1159).
The Day of the Dragon is the day on which the banquet of the Great Thanksgiving Festival is held, and the entry music is played as musicians enter. Ikuno is a poetic place in Tanba Province, in the area of present-day Fukuchiyama City, Kyoto. A precedent is the poem by Koshikibu no Naishi in the Kin'yō wakashū, "Ōeyama ikuno no michi no tōkereba mada fumi mo mizu Ama no Hashidate."

The first line, "Ōeyama," is the mountain on the way from the capital to Tanba Province. It is the same first line as Koshikibu no Naishi's poem and marks the road to Tanba.
In the second line, "koete Ikuno no," "ikuno" is a pivot word joining the place name Ikuno and "iku no," the plain one crosses and travels on. It uses the same pivot word as "ikuno" in Koshikibu no Naishi's poem.
The third line, "sue tōmi," means "because the way ahead is long," with "mi" expressing cause. The long road leads on to "michi aru yo" in the fourth line.
The fourth line, "michi aru yo ni mo," means "an age in which the right Way prevails." The sense of "michi" shifts from the road to Ikuno to the rightful way of government. The next poem, 753, also sings of "michi aru miyo," so the two poems stand side by side with the same phrase.
The last line, "ai ni keru kana," means "how I have come to meet it," adding the exclamatory "kana" to "ni keri." Laying the joy of meeting an age of the right Way over the long journey across the mountain, the poem turns a place name of the Suki province into a celebration of the reign.

Author

Fujiwara no Norikane

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other