Hyakunin Isshu #11
Sunday, 25 April 2010 08:22![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lnhammer Tell her, at least,
you boats of the fishermen,
that I have set out
rowing through the Eighty Isles
across the plain of the sea.
wata no hara
yasoshima kakete
kogiidenu to
hito ni wa tsugeyo
ama no tsuribune
---L.
you boats of the fishermen,
that I have set out
rowing through the Eighty Isles
across the plain of the sea.
—21 April 2010
Original by Ono no Takamura, written "to someone in the capital" when he was exiled to Oki Island (off the north coast of Honshu) for refusing to join an embassy to T'ang China. Yes, he addresses the boats, not the fishermen, as odd as that sounds. The someone to be told is unspecified, but given the apparently contrastive wa, a lover seems likely. Eighty Islands is both a name for the Japanese archipelago and a generically large number, and a vague archaic verb (kakete) makes it possible to endlessly debate whether he has set out towards or through them.wata no hara
yasoshima kakete
kogiidenu to
hito ni wa tsugeyo
ama no tsuribune
---L.