Category Archives: Ise Shū

Ise Shū 7

When she had been in Yamato for about three months, she went to a temple called Ryûmon. This was around the eleventh day of the First Month. The site of the temple was such that it seemed the waterfall from amongst the clouds. The places the holy men called home were ancient in the extreme: perched atop the crags with the moss hanging in eightfold beards from them. Struck by completely unfamiliar emotions, she found the place moving in the extreme, and the tears she shed put the waterfall to shame. She had stopped for a moment upon the bridge when it suddenly turned extremely dark. ‘Is it going to rain?’ asked one of her companions. ‘It’s snow that will fall,’ replied the monks and, at that moment, the sky turned murky with an enormous snowfall; the party said to each other, ‘Shall we compose poems?’, so Ise composed:

裁ち縫はぬ衣きし人もなき物をなに山姫の布さらすらむ

tatinuFanu
kinu kisi Fito mo
naki mono wo
nani yama Fime no
nuno sarasuramu
Uncut and unsewn
Were the clothes those folk wore;
Gone now,
So why should the mountain’s princess
Bleach her cloth?

Ise
伊勢

Ise Shū 6

The lady’s reply:

わたつうみと頼めしことのあせぬれば我ぞわが身のうらはうらむる

watatu umi to
tanomesi koto no
asenureba
ware zo wa ga mi ni
ura Fa uramuru
As the boundless main,
As constant were your words to me, and
As shallow, so
‘Tis I, yes I, who
Is beached upon regret!

Ise Shū 4

The Biwa Minister’s reply:

唐土の吉野山にこもるともおもはむ人に我おくれめや

morokosi no
yosino no yama ni
komoru tomo
omoFamu Fito ni
ware okureme ya
As distant as Cathay,
Upon the mount of Yoshino
You may seclude yourself, yet
‘Tis one who loves you,
I, who is abandoned, am I not?

This poem was composed in reply by the man, and sent from Narasaka.

Ise Shū 3

At around the time this man married elsewhere, thinking he would no longer visit her, she decided to spend some time in Yamato, where she had lived before, and sent this to him:

みわの山いかにまち見む年ふともたづぬる人もあらじと思へば

miwa no yama
ika ni matimimu
tosi Fu tomo
tadunuru Fito mo
arazi to omoFeba
On the mount of Miwa
Why should I wait
?
Years may pass, yet
Would you come enquiring-
I think not!

Ise
伊勢

 

Ise Shū 2

Even though the lady felt he was utterly heartless, she was moved to reply:

涙さへ時雨にそひてふるさとは紅葉の色も濃さまさりけり

namida saFe
sigure ni soFite
Furusato Fa
momidi no iro mo
kosa masarikeri
Ever my tears
Fall with the showers;
At my ancient home,
The lustre of the Autumn leaves
Is deepest of all.

and attaching it to a branch of privet, sent it to him. This must have been around the Ninth Month. The man read the poem and thought it extraordinarily moving.

GSS VIII: 459

Ise Shū 1

During the reign of the Kanpyō Emperor, a lady whose father was Governor of Yamato served in the retinue of the consort who had borne His Majesty children. Her father loved her dearly, and felt that he could not wed her to any ordinary man, so when the brother of the consort proposed marriage to her with great attentiveness, what was she to do but allow the union? Though the lady wondered what her father would say about it, he replied, ‘It must be the bonds from a previous life that have brought you to this fate, but young men are known to be unreliable…’ Years passed, and the man wed into the family of the man who was Major Captain at the time. The lady’s father heard of it and thought that, indeed, matters had proceeded as he had feared. While the lady was still in an agony of shame, a messenger came from the man’s household to the estate of her father near Gojo and, on a scarlet autumn leaf upon the fence, wrote:

人住まず荒れたるやどを來て見れば今ぞ木の葉は錦織りける

Fito sumazu
aretaru yado wo
kite mireba
ima zo ko no Fa Fa
nisiki worikeru
I live no more
At this overgrown house
I have come to gaze upon, but
Now, the leaves upon the trees
Weave a fine brocade.

GSS VIII: 458