Oritachite urata ni hirou ama no ko wa tsumi yori tsumi o narau narikeri

下り立ちて浦田に拾ふ海人の子は
つみよりつみを習ふなりけり

Roma-ji: Oritachite urata ni hirou ama no ko wa tsumi yori tsumi o narau narikeri
English Translation: The fishers' children
who go down to the shore flats
to gather tsumi—
from tsumi shells, it seems,
they learn the ways of sin.
Meaning: The fishermen's children who go down to gather on the tidal flats learn sin itself from gathering the shells called tsumi.
Commentary: Miscellaneous Poems 1373

Headnote: "Going around toward Hibi and Shibukawa, I meant to cross to Shikoku, but the wind was bad and days passed. At a place called the bay of Shibukawa, many little children were gathering something, and when I asked, they said they were gathering things called tsumi; hearing this I composed this"
Going round by Hibi and Shibukawa in Bizen to cross to Shikoku, Saigyō was delayed by bad winds. At Shibukawa Bay, asking what the many children were gathering, he was told they were picking up things called tsumi. The fishers' children who go down to the flats, he says, learn tsumi, sin, from tsumi, the shells.
Pivoting the shell's name tsumi on the Buddhist tsumi, "sin," he sees in children innocently gathering shells the beginning of a fate of living by taking life. Following the sin of the first pole in the preceding poem, it contemplates the bond between fishing and sin.

First line, “oritachite”: going down to the shore.
Second line, “urata ni hirou”: gathering on the tidal flats like fields by the bay.
Third line, “ama no ko wa”: the fishermen's children.
Fourth line, “tsumi yori tsumi o”: tsumi pivots on the shell's name and "sin," "from tsumi shells, sin."
Fifth line, “narau narikeri”: keri marks realization, "so they learn it."
Author: Saigyō
Source: Sankashu
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