The Sarashina Diary: the Literary Diary of the Daughter of Sugawara Takasue from 1032 to 1039 (5)

 

     Nowadays, I deeply regretted the idle fancies of my old days.  As my parents would not accompany me to temples or shrines, I became impatient.  Now, I wished to be wealthy and influential and to bring up my children as I like to.  For myself, I’d like to become a millionaire and to do my best to pile up virtuous deeds for life in the other world.  So, encouraging my heart, I went to the Ishiyama-dera Temple on December, the twentieth-something day.  It snowed a lot and the route looked lovely.  As I saw the checkpoint at Osaka Pass, I remembered that it had been also in winter when I had passed it on my way up to Kyoto on such a windy day.  On remembering the day, it blew as rough as on the day.

The winds across the checkpoint of Osaka

Sound the same as they did long ago,

While my age has tripled since then.

     Seki-dera Temple had been made magnificent.  That reminded me of the old roughly hewn head of Buddha.  It touched my heart that years had passed.  The beach at Uchide did not look changed in the passing of months and years.

     Towards evening, I arrived at Ishiyama-dera Temple.  I went down to the purification house and went up to the main hall.  No voice was heard but the mountain wind was dreadful.  During Buddhist practices, I fell asleep.  I heard a voice saying, "From the inner shrine musk perfume has been bestowed.  Tell them at once."  At the words, I awoke and found it to be a dream.  I thought it was a good omen and passed the night in prayer.

     The next day, the wind raged and it snowed heavily.  I comforted my lonely heart talking with my companion, who was a waiting-lady of Yushi.  We left after staying there for 3 days.

     On October, 25th, 1046, Kyoto was in great excitement over the purification ceremonies before the harvest ritual which was held by Emperor Go-Reizen (1025-1068) for the first time after he succeeded to the throne on April 8th, 1045. 

     As for me, I had started purification and ablution to visit Hase-dera Temple in Hase and set out to the temple on the day.  My family tried to stop me, saying, “It’s a spectacle to be seen only once in one reign.  Even country people come to see it.  You are mad to leave Kyoto that very day when you can choose many other days to leave.  Your deeds will certainly be gossipped widely and down through generations."  My brother was very angry.  My husband, however, said, "Please, please, let her go as she likes."  According to my wish, my husband let me go.  His kindness and understanding of my obstination and stubbornness touched me.

     I pitied those who accompanied me.  They, with longing hearts, wanted to see the ceremony.  I thought, however, to myself, “What have we to do with such shows?  Buddha will be pleased with those who have the wills to come at a time like this.  I will surely receive the divine favour.”  We started before dawn.

     The ceremony parade was to come east through Nijo Oji Street.  We went through the street west.  My company wore pure white with pine torches flaming before us.  All the people on horseback, in carriage, or on foot who encountered us on their way to the stands prepared for sightseers said in surprise, "What is that?  What is that?"  They didn’t overlook us.  Some even made fun of us or ridiculed us.

     When I passed before the gate of Fujiwara Yoshinori (1002-1048), the Commander of the Bodyguard, his men were standing there before the wide-open portals.  They said, laughing, "Here goes a company to a temple, while there are many days and months in the world!"  There was one, however, who said seriously, "What is it to cultivate our eyes for a moment?  She must be firmly determined.  She will certainly receive Buddha's favour.  How silly we are!  We ought also to make up our minds in this way without sightseeing."

     I had wanted to leave Kyoto before the streets were lit up by the morning sun.  We had started in the middle of the night.  We waited for belated people at the big gate of Hosho-ji Temple, wondering if the very thick fog would become thinner.  People flowed in from the country like a river.  Nobody stood aside to make room for us.  Even ill-behaved and vulgar children passed beside my carriage with some difficulty and had words of wonder and contempt toward us.  I felt sorry that I had started that day, yet, praying to Buddha with all my heart, I arrived at the ferry port of Uji River.  Even there the people were coming up to Kyoto in throngs.  The ferrymen, seeing these numberless people, were filled with their own importance, and grew proud.  They, tucking up their sleeves, hid their faces and, leaning on their poles, would not bring their boats to the river bank at once.  They looked around whistling and assumed an indifferent air.  We could not cross the river for a long time, so I looked around the place, which I had felt a curiosity to see ever since reading the Tale of Genji, which tells that Princesses Oikimi, Nakanokimi, and Ukifune, who were nieces of the Shining Prince, lived here.  At last, we managed to get across the river and went to see the Uji Mansion, which became Byodo-in Temple in 1052.  I wondered if the residence Ukifune lived in looked like the mansion.

     As we had started before daybreak, my people were tired out.  We rested at Yahiroji (today's Noroji Tono, Joyo, Kyoto 610-0111) to eat.  Our guard scared us, "Isn’t that Mount Kurikoma, which is notorious for its robbers?   As it is towards evening, be ready with your weapons."  I listened to these words with a shudder, but we passed that mountain safely and the sun was at its summit when we arrived at Lake Nieno.  They went in several directions to seek lodging and returned, saying there was no proper place but only a lower-class hut.  As there was no other place, we took that.

     In the house to which the hut belonged, there were only 2 humble men, for the family had all gone to Kyoto.  The 2 men did not sleep that night at all, but kept watch around the house, going in and out of the house.  The women who were in the recess asked, "Why do you walk about so often?" and the men answered, "Why?  We have rented the hut to perfect strangers.  What should we do if the pot were stolen?  Wondering what we should do, we keep walking."  I felt both eerie and funny when I heard them.

     In the early morning, we left there.  We called at Todai-ji Temple and prayed there.  Isonokami Jingu Shrine was antique and on the verge of ruin.  That night, we lodged at a temple in Yamabe.  Although I was tired out, I recited some sutras and went to sleep.  In my dream, I saw a very noble and pure woman.  I went over to where she was.  The wind blew hard.  She found me out, and said, smiling, "For what purpose have you come?"  I answered, "How could I help coming?"  She said, "You would better be in the Inner Palace, and talk with the lecturer's wife." 　I found the dream delightful and promising, and kept praying more than before.

     We crossed the Hatsuse River and arrived at Hase-dera Temple in the evening.  After purifying, I went up to the temple.  I stayed there for three days.  When I was going to leave the next morning, I dozed off.  At night, I dreamt that someone threw in a cedar twig, saying, “That is a token bestowed by Goddess Inari.”  I was startled into waking up, to find it was only a dream.

     We left Todai-ji Temple far before dawn.  We could not find lodging, and again spent a night in a very small hut before we crossed Nara-saka Hill.  "This place is very shady and suspicious.  Do not sleep!”  “Even if something unexpected happens, don't be panicked!  Keep lying down even without breathing!"  Hearing these words, I spent the night in cheerlessness and in dread.  I felt that I lived a thousand years that night.  When the day dawned and we were leaving the hut, I was told that we had been in a robbers' den and that the mistress of the house had been doing something strange and mysterious.

     We crossed the Uji River in a high wind and the ferryboat passed very near the fixed fishing nets.

I have known the fixed fishing net in the Uji River

Only by name, but today

I even count its poles and the waves among them.

     As I have written down events which happened in the intervals of 2-3 years or 4-5 years without the links among them, my life might seem to have been nothing but that of an ascetic who doesn’t stay long in one place, but I was not.  I have jotted down the happenings in years of betweens.

     In the spring of 1047, I stayed in Kurama-dera Temple.  It was a soft spring day, with mist trailing over the mountainside.  Locals dug out and brought some tokoro roots from mountains as food and I found them yummy.

     When I left there, the flowers were already gone and it wasn’t beautiful.  When I went there again in October, however, the mountain views along the way were more beautiful than anything else.  The mountainside looked as if brocade was spread and displayed.  The stream, rushing headlong and overflowing, looked as if shattered crystals were gushing out.

     When I arrived at the temple and reached the monastery, the maple leaves, wet with a shower, were brilliant beyond comparison.  I found the scene something like:

Red leaves are said to fall deeper into autumn every time it rains.

How the rain in deep mountains colored and woven the brocade

More deeply and brilliantly than those in other places?

     After 2 years or so, I stayed again in Ishiyama.  It rained hard all night.  I had heard rain is annoying on a journey, and opened the shutter, to find the waning moon lighting even the depths of the ravine.  What I thought was rain was the stream rippling below the roots of the trees.

The mountain brook sounds like rain.

Yet, the waning moon shines over all

Even more brightly than I have ever seen before.

     I paid a visit to Hase-dera Temple in Hatsuse again.  My journey was supported more by my family than before.  Along the route, people invited me to ceremonious dinners here and there, and we made nothing but slow progress.  The red leaves were beautiful at the Hosono Forest in Yamashiro Province.  I crossed the Hatsuse River, encouraged with the thought:

I get back to Hatsuse River again.

Last time, I only dreamt a Japanese cedar twig,

Which I should surely get this time.

     We left after staying there for 3 days.  This time, we were too many to lodge in that small hut at the foot of the Nara-saka Hill, so we camped in the field.  Our men pitched a tent with grass and twigs and let us stay in it.  They passed the night lying on mukabaki fur spread on the grass with straw mats covering them.  They could not sleep because of the dew which fell on their heads.  The moon was clear and incomparably picturesque.

Even in the sky in our wandering journey,

The waning moon is no less beautiful

Than that in the sky in Kyoto.

     Although he wasn’t like protagonists in romance stories or tales, my husband, Tachibana Toshimichi (1002-1058), saticfied me economically and socially.  Even when I went on distant pilgrimages, I can humorously write about my pleasures, suffuring, and fatigue on the journeys.  Naturally, I could not only dispel frustrated feelings about my husband’s not being romantic but also felt reliable and dependable.  I had no pressing sorrow in those days and tried to bring up my young sons to the level I could think of.  I was looking forward to see years passing.  I just hoped my husband, upon whom I depended, would be happily successful in life like other noblemen.   Having that hope encouraged me.

     A dear friend of mine, who used to talk with me a lot, and who used to exchange tanka poems with me nights and days, not so often as of old but still continued to write to each other.  She went down to Echizen Province as the wife of the Governor of the province.  All communication between us ceased.  Finding the means of sending a message to her with great difficulty, I wrote her a tanka poem:

Our friendship that had never died out

Is just dying out,

As the snow along the route to Echizen is so deep.

     She wrote back:

The snow of Mount Haku-san in Echizen

Is too deep for a little pebble under it to reveal itself.

My friendship is like the pebble but never dies out.

     I went down to the depth of Nishiyama in the western hills of Kyoto on March 1st.  There were no people seen and a haze mildly and calmly enclosed us.  Quietly and melancholically, only cherry blossoms were blooming all over.

Too far from town, in the depths of mountains,

The cherry blooms and wastes its blooms away

With none to see.

     When the sorrow of our marital relations troubled my heart, I made a retreat in Koryu-ji Temple in Uzumasa.  To me, there arrived a letter from a senior waiting-lady who served Princess Yushi.  While I was answering it, the sound of a temple bell carried to me, and I wrote to her:

The sound of the evening bell

Reminds me of the sorrow of the outer world

And has lonely grow in my heart.

     One day, I visited Princess Yushi’s residence, where it was cheerful and peaceful.  I talked with 2 congenial friends.  I left the residence and, the next day, finding life rather tedious, I thought longingly of them and sent a tanka poem:

We used to work together in the rough sea of tears,

Dampening our sleeves with our tears.

Yet, I miss those days.

One wrote back:

I’m still diving in the rough sea of tears,

Without finding any shells or something worth,

But with my sleeves always wet with the sea water.

     And the other wrote back:

Who would dive into the rough sea of tears,

Awaiting the waves to subside,

If the sea vegetables weren’t available,

     The friend who had the same mind as me, who had exchanged messaged with each other, and who talked about every unpleasant, heartbreaking, and joyful things of the world, went down west to Chikuzen Province.  One night, when the moon was very bright, I remembered that I once had visited Princess’s residence on such a night.  On the night, we wouldn’t go to sleep, but sat up gazing up to the moon.  Missing the night, I went to bed.  I met her in the residence as we used to do.  I awoke startled.  It was a dream.  The moon was then near the western ridge of the mountain.  I remembered Ono no Komachi once composed:

Was it because I was sleeping with the thought of him

That he appeared to me in my dream?

If only I had known it was a dream, I would not have woken up.

     I also thought, "I would have not awakened," and composed: 

I woke up to find my bed heartbreaking.

The moon, which goes west!

Please tell her I miss you.

     In Autumn, 1056, I had occasion to go down to Izumi Province, where my brother, Sugawara Sadayoshi (1002-1065), was the Governor.  We took a boat from Yodo, and the short voyage along Yodo River was very picturesque.  We stayed at Takahama (today's Takahama, Shimamoto, Mishima District, Osaka 618-0012) along the river for a night.  It was dark, and, very late at night, I heard the sound of an oar.  As I asked about it, I was told that a woman singer had come.  My companions were excited and called her boat to come alongside ours.  She was lit by a distant fire.  She only wore a foundation garment and her sleeves were long.  She shaded her face with a fan and sang with pathos.  The scene seemed deeply charming.

     The next evening, when the sun was still on the mountaintop, we passed the beach of Sumiyoshi.  The boundary between the sky and the sea was hazed all in mist.  Pine branches, the surface of the sea, and the beach where waves rolled up, were all more beautiful than a picture.

In the evening of Autumn,

What words can describe the seashore of Sumiyoshi!?

What can be compared with it?

     As the boat was towed along the beach, I looked back again and again, never satiated.

     In the Winter, I returned to Kyoto.  We took our boat at Otsu Bay, the nearest port from the provincial government office.  That night, a tempest raged with such fury that even rocks seemed to be shaken.  Thunder came roaring, and the sound of dashing waves and the tumult of winds made me feel that my life was coming to an end.  My people dragged the boat ashore, where we spent the night.  The rain stopped, but not the winds.  We could not start.  We spent 5 or 6 days on these wide-stretching sandhill.  When the wind had finally gone down a little, I looked out, rolling up the curtain of my cabin.  The evening tide was rising swiftly and cranes called to each other in the inlet.

     Provincial officials came in crowds to see us.  They said that if we had sailed out for Ishizu that night, nothing would have remained of the boat.  The words terrified me:

If the boat had sailed out before the storm raged

Toward Ishizu in the wild sea,

Our boat could have disappeared among the waves.