山越しの風を時じみ寝る夜おちず
家なる妹を懸けて偲ひつ
家なる妹を懸けて偲ひつ
- Roma-ji
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Yamagoshi no kaze o tokijimi nuru yo ochizu ie naru imo o kakete shinoitsu
- English Translation
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From over the hills
the wind blows on without cease;
not a night I sleep
but I keep within my heart
the dear wife I left at home.
- Meaning
- Because the wind blowing over the mountains never ceased, not a single night went by without my thinking fondly of my wife waiting at home.
- Commentary
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Book One Miscellaneous Poems 6
Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "A poem composed by Prince Ikusa on seeing the mountains when the Emperor journeyed to Ayanokōri in Sanuki Province — envoy"
An envoy telling how, in Sanuki, the wind blowing over the mountains chilled the traveler without pause, so that every night he thought of the wife he had left at home. The long poem likened the melancholy of a spring journey to the salt burned by the fisher-girls of Ami Bay; the envoy narrows it to "the wind from over the hills" and "my wife at home," gathering the homesickness into a few words. The headnote places it on a royal journey to Sanuki, but the left note points out that the Nihon Shoki records no such visit and suggests it may belong to Emperor Jomei's journey to the Iyo hot-spring palace in the eleventh year of his reign.
Prince Ikusa is, as the left note itself says, "unknown," and his identity remains unclear. Some take him to be a royal émigré from Paekche; others, a member of the imperial family.
The first line, "from over the hills," means the wind comes blowing across the mountains, picking up the long poem's "wind that crosses the hills." It hints that home lies beyond the ridges and becomes the starting point of the longing.
The second line, kaze o tokijimi, joins the stem of tokiji ("unceasing") with the suffix mi to give a reason: "because the wind never ceases." This "o ... mi" pattern is common in the Man'yōshū.
The third line, "not a night I sleep," uses the verb otsu, "to be left out," with the negative zu, stressing that not one night was missed. The line is hypermetric, with six syllables.
The fourth line, "my wife who is at home," uses naru, the attributive form of the auxiliary of existence, setting the traveler apart from the wife at home. Poem 68 in this book also contains "my wife who is at home," and the two echo each other as poems of a traveler thinking of his wife.
The last line, "I kept her in my heart and yearned," ends with the perfective tsu. "Kakete" answers the long poem's kake no yoroshiku, overlaying the wind catching at the traveler's sleeves with his heart catching on his wife.
- Author
- Prince Ikusa
- Source
- Manyoshu
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