關山のせきともあられぬなみたこそ
近江の海と流いつらめ
近江の海と流いつらめ
- Roma-ji
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Sekiyama no seki to mo ararenu namida koso ōmi no umi to nagareizurame
- English Translation
-
Not even the barrier
on the Barrier Mountain
can hold back my tears,
and surely it is they that flow
and become the Lake of Ōmi
- Meaning
- My tears, which not even the barrier on Barrier Mountain can hold back, must be what flows out and becomes the Lake of Ōmi.
- Commentary
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21 The Pilgrimage to Ishiyama
When the eighth month came, Izumi Shikibu set out for Ishiyama Temple to ease her idleness, meaning to stay about seven days. Thinking that he had not written for a long time, the prince was about to send a letter when the page boy told him, "I went the other day, but they say she is at Ishiyama Temple these days." "Then today is already over," said the prince. "Go tomorrow morning." The boy came to Ishiyama with the prince's letter. Even before the Buddha, Izumi Shikibu's heart was elsewhere; she longed only for the capital and was saddened to think that such a pilgrimage was a sign of how much her life had changed, and she prayed earnestly to the Buddha. Just then she sensed someone below the railing, and looking down in surprise, she saw the page boy. Moved that he had come to so unexpected a place, she had someone ask why, and he held out a letter. She opened it more eagerly than usual.
The woman is Izumi Shikibu, daughter of Ōe no Masamune and, as the wife of Tachibana no Michisada, Governor of Izumi, mother of Koshikibu no Naishi. The Prince of the Dazaifu is Prince Atsumichi, fourth son of Emperor Reizei, so called because he served as Governor-General of the Dazaifu. Ishiyama Temple is a sacred site of Kannon in the province of Ōmi, in present-day Ōtsu, Shiga, reached from the capital by crossing the Ōsaka Barrier.
When the prince's "Tazuneyuku ōsakayama no kai mo naku ōmeku bakari wasurubeshi ya wa" and "Uki ni yori hitaya komori to omou tomo ōmi no umi wa uchiidete miyo" arrived, Izumi Shikibu sent back only this poem.
In the margin of this poem she added "Kokoromi ni ono ga kokoro mo kokoromimu isa miyako e to kite sasoimin."
The opening lines mean "not even as the barrier of Barrier Mountain can it be held back," Barrier Mountain being the mountain of the Ōsaka Barrier and the verb meaning to dam, answering his "Ōsaka Mountain."
The remaining lines mean "it must be my tears that flow out as the Lake of Ōmi," sealed by an emphatic construction ending in an auxiliary of present conjecture. Taking up his "Lake of Ōmi," she exaggerates the vast lake spread below as the outflow of her own tears, protesting that even in seclusion on the mountain her tears of love never stop.
- Author
- Izumi Shikibu
- Source
- Izumi Shikibu Nikki
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Uki ni yori hitaya komori to omou tomo ōmi no umi wa uchiidete miyo
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Kokoromi ni ono ga kokoro mo kokoromimu isa miyako e to kite sasoimin