神風の伊勢の浜荻折り伏せて
旅寝やすらん荒き浜辺に
旅寝やすらん荒き浜辺に
- Roma-ji
-
Kamikaze no ise no hamaogi orifusete tabine ya suran araki hamabe ni
- English Translation
-
Where the divine winds blow,
breaking down the beach reeds of Ise
to lay them for a bed,
is he sleeping on his journey
out upon that rough seashore?
- Meaning
- Breaking down the beach reeds of Ise to make a bed, is he sleeping on his journey out on that wild and windswept shore?
- Commentary
-
Book Ten Travel Poems 911
Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Topic unknown."
This is the second of a sequence of poems on lodging for the night on a journey. The speaker imagines the night of one who has set out, wondering if he sleeps on the rough shore on a bed of broken beach reeds of Ise. The headnote gives no topic, and the circumstances of composition are not recorded.
No author is named, and the poem continues from the preceding one as an anonymous poem.
The scene is a night spent thinking of one who has gone away, from the side of the one left at home, imagining the traveler sleeping on the shore of Ise.
The direct occasion is not recorded.
The poem is included in Book Four of the Man'yōshū as a poem by the wife of Go no Danochi, left at home when he went to Ise Province.
The text carries a variant note giving "shiki" for "fuse," but "fuse" is adopted in accordance with the main text and the reading line.
The first line, "kamikaze no," is a pillow word for Ise.
The second line, "ise no hamaogi," is the beach reeds growing on the shore of Ise. In Ise the reed is said to have been called "hamaogi," and as a plant of the shore it is linked to a traveler's bed.
The third line, "orifusete," means "breaking them down to lie on." It shows a bed made of broken reeds, sleeping in the open with no roof.
The fourth line, "tabine ya suran," means "is he sleeping on his journey?" The particle "ya" is answered by "ran," which conjectures about what is out of sight, in the attributive form. Like "hitori ya kimi ga yamaji koyuran" in 902, it thinks of the traveler from the side of the one left behind, and the mountain journey and the seashore sleep form a pair.
The last line, "araki hamabe ni," means "on the rough seashore." By inversion the place of sleep comes last. Taking up "yado wa nakushite" in the preceding poem, the harshness of sleeping without shelter is given through a scene of the shore.
- Author
- Unknown Poet
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
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- Knowing nothing yet, the people of my homeland must, until today, still await me, who had promised I would come back by this day.
- As I cross the plain of Ina, where the long birds fly, over Mount Arima the evening mists have risen, and there is no inn for me.
- Those from my old home who came into my dreams sleeping on the road— might they bear a grudge toward me, since I have not written again?
- Standing all night long, I have seen this evening end; at Sonohara, though they call the hut a place to lie, the name was of no use at all.