The Sarashina Diary: the Literary Diary of the Daughter of Sugawara Takasue from 1032 to 1039 (6)

 

      I devoted myself in various ways to my husband.  If, however, I had served Princess Yushi, devoting myself continuously, what favor could I have won?  As I attended on and off, nothing favorable happened.

     As I advanced in age, I felt it unbecoming to behave like a young woman.  I grew ill, and could not go out to temples for worship as I liked to.  Even an occasional outing came to an end.  I didn’t feel like living long.  All I worried about night and day was to see my young children’s being worth their salt with my own eyes.

     I looked forward to the appointment of my husband as a provincial governor.  In Autumn, he got a long-expected position, but not such a good one as we had hoped.  We were very disappointed and sorry.  He was appointed to be the Governor of Shinano Province in Autumn, 1058.  It was not so distant as the provinces where my father had been appointed to work.  I had often thought back to the long route in which I had returned to Kyoto.  My husband had no alternative but to go, and we hastily made preparations.  To change the route to the province luckier according to the philosophy of the yin-yang, he decided to start in the middle of August from the house where one of our daughters had recently gone to live.  Nobody knew what would happen after he left.  On that day, many people gathered and were more noisy than lively.

     He was accompanied by our son, Nakatoshi, who wore a blackish red coat with a blue lining and aster-coloured hakama, carrying a long sword.  My husband wore a blueish indigo coat and hakama, followed by his son.  They mounted their horses beside the veranda.

     After they had gone out noisily, I felt very, very lonely.  As I had heard the province was not so distant, I was less hopeless than I had been before.

     The people who accompanied him to see him off returned the next day and told me that my husband and son had gone down majestically.  They also said they had seen a very big will-o’-the-wisp this daybreak emerge and that it flew towards Kyoto.  I only supposed it to be from someone in my husband’s retinue.  How could I think the worst?

     I could think of nothing but how to bring up our children to be self-supporting.  My husband came back in April of the next year because of sickness.  He passed the Summer and Autumn at home.  On September 25th, he became ill.  On October 10th, he had gone like a dream.  I once wrote, “Compared to the deaths of strangers, the sorrow of my sister’s death was beyond description.”  My sorrow over my husband's death was beyond comparison.

     Now, I knew that my present state had been reflected in the mirror offered to Hase-dera Temple about 25 years before.  In it, someone had been seen weeping in agony.  The reflection of the happier one had not been realized, and could never be realized in the future.

     On the 23rd, we burnt his remains into smoke with despairing hearts.   I remembered my boy had been dressed exquisitely and attended and that he had gone down with his father last Autumn.  This time, I saw the boy dressed in black with a white sleeveless outer garment.  He followed the bier and walked out, weeping.  My feeling when I saw him going out can never be expressed.  I felt like wandering in a dream and wondered if my husband was seeing me.

     If I had not given myself up to reading useless romance stories and composing taka poems, but had practiced religious austerities night and day, I would not have seen such a dream world.  When I visited Hase-dera Temple for the first time, I dreamt that someone threw in a cedar twig, saying, “That is a token bestowed by Goddess Inari.”  If I had visited Inari Shrine after I left the temple, this thing would not have happened.  In these past years, I had seen the dreams which bid me to pray to Goddess Amaterasu.  The dream interpreter explained the dreams that I should work in the Imperial Court as a wetting nurse, sheltered behind the favour of the Emperor and Empress.  The interpretation was never realized.  Only the sorrowful reflection in the mirror was realized unaltered.  How pitiful and sorrowful I was!  Thus, nothing had happened as I wished.  I was just wandering in this world, doing no virtuous deeds for the future life and for the other world.

     My life seemed to survive sorrows, but I was uneasy at the thought that I would not pass away to the other world as I wished.  Yet, there was only one dream I could rely on for the other world.

     On the night of October 13th, 1055, I dreamed this dream:

     In the garden over the edge of the eaves of my house, there stood Amitabha Buddha!  He was not seen distinctly, but was seen dimly and vaguely as if through a light haze.  I tried hard to snatch a glimpse through gaps and breaks of the haze.  The lotus flower pedestal was three or four feet above the ground; the Buddha was about six feet tall.

     Golden light shone forth; one hand was extended, the fingers of the other were bent in the form of benediction.  None but I could see him, yet I felt such reverence that I dared not approach the blind to see him better.  None but I might hear him saying, "Then, this time, I will go back, and afterwards come again to accept you."  I was startled and awoke into the 14th day.  This dream only was my hope for the other world.

     I had lived with my husband's nephews, but, after his death, we lived apart and didn’t see each other.  One very dark night, I was visited by my nephew who was the 6th among the brothers.  I found him a  rare guest and composed: 

I live in darkness without the moon to be seen.

Why have you come tonight

To see an old woman abandoned by the moon?

     After the death of my husband, an intimate friend stopped all communication.

You may be thinking

I no longer live in this world.

Yet, I live and spend my pitiful days weeping, weeping.

In October, the moon was very bright, and my eyes full of tears looked at the moon:

Tears endlessly flood into my mind.

They always cloud my mind.

My mind, however, finds the moon bright even through them.

     Months came and years went away.  Whenever I recollected the dream-like incident of my husband’s death, my mind was troubled and everything went black in front of my eyes.  I cannot remember the details of when my husband died.

     My acquaintances lived separately.  I remained alone in my solitary home.  I was very lonely, uneasy, helpless, and sad.  I was tired of sitting up all night alone, and sent a tanka poem to one who had not called on me for a long time:

Weeds grow before my gate and my sleeves are wet

With the dew of the weeds and the dew of my eyes.

I weep and wail over being not visited.

     She spent her retired days as a nun, sharing a temple with other nuns, and she wrote back:

Your weeds are grown in your once sociable home.

Sympathize me about the weeds in the garden

Where only reculses live.