Part 4
_The star gods meet on the shore of the Heavenly River,_ _Like theirs full of ecstasy is my heart_ _And grave things of daily life are forgotten_ _On the night your message comes to me._
On the thirteenth day of that month the moon shone very brightly. Darkness was chased away even from every corner of the heavens. It was about midnight and all were asleep.
We were sitting on the veranda. My sister, who was gazing at the sky thoughtfully, said, "If I flew away now, leaving no trace behind, what would you think of it?" She saw that her words shocked me, and she turned the conversation [lightly] to other things, and we laughed.
Then I heard a carriage with a runner before it stop near the house. The man in the carriage called out, "Ogi-no-ha! Ogi-no-ha!" [Reed-leaf, a woman's name or pet name] twice, but no woman made reply. The man cried in vain until he was tired of it, and played his flute [a reed-pipe] more and more searchingly in a very beautiful rippling melody, and [at last] drove away.
_Flute music in the night,_ _"Autumn Wind"[40] sighing,_ _Why does the reed-leaf make no reply?_
Thus I challenged my sister, and she took it up:
_Alas! light of heart_ _Who could so soon give over playing!_ _The wind did not wait_ _For the response of the reed-leaf._
We sat together looking up into the firmament, and went to bed after daybreak.
At midnight of the Deutzia month [April, 1024] a fire broke out, and the cat which had been waited on as a daughter of the First Adviser was burned to death. She had been used to come mewing whenever I called her by the name of that lady, as if she had understood me. My father said that he would tell the matter to the First Adviser, for it is a strange and heartfelt story. I was very, very sorry for her.
Our new temporary shelter was far narrower than the other. I was sad, for we had a very small garden and no trees. I thought with regret of the old spacious garden which was wild as a deep wood, and in time of flowers and red leaves the sight of it was never inferior to the surrounding mountains.
In the garden of the opposite house white and red plum-blossoms grew in confusion and their perfume came on the wind and filled me with thoughts of our old home.
_When from the neighbouring garden the perfume-laden air_ _Saturates my soul with memories,_ _Rises the thought of the beloved plum-tree_ _Blooming under the eaves of the house which is gone._
On the moon-birth of the Rice-Sprout month my sister died after giving birth to a child. From childhood, even a stranger's death had touched my heart deeply. This time I lamented, filled with speechless pity and sorrow.
While mother and the others were with the dead, I lay with the memory-awakening children one on either side of me. The moonlight found its way through the cracks of the roof [perhaps of their temporary dwelling] and illumined the face of the baby. The sight gave my heart so deep a pang that I covered its face with my sleeve, and drew the other child closer to my side, mothering the unfortunate.
[Illustration: A NOBLEMAN'S HOUSE AND GROUNDS IN THE AZUMAYA STYLE]
After some days one of my relatives sent me a romance entitled "The Prince Yearning after the Buried," with the following note: "The late lady had asked me to find her this romance. At that time I thought it impossible, but now to add to my sorrow, some one has just sent it to me."
I answered:
_What reason can there be that she_ _Strangely should seek a romance of the buried?_ _Buried now is the seeker_ _Deep under the mosses._
My sister's nurse said that since she had lost her, she had no reason to stay and went back to her own home weeping.
_Thus death or parting separates us each from the other,_ _Why must we part? Oh, world too sad for me!_
"For remembrance of her I wanted to write about her," began a letter from her nurse--but it stopped short with the words, "Ink seems to have frozen up, I cannot write any more."[41]
_How shall I gather memories of my sister?_ _The stream of letters is congealed._ _No comfort may be found in icicles._
So I wrote, and the answer was:
_Like the comfortless plover of the beach_ _In the sand printing characters soon to be washed away,_ _Unable to leave a more enduring trace in this fleeting world._
That nurse went to see the grave and returned sobbing, saying:
_I seek her in the field, but she is not there,_ _Nor is she in the smoke of the cremation._ _Where is her last dwelling-place?_ _How can I find it?_
The lady who had been my stepmother heard of this [and wrote]:
_When we wander in search of her,_ _Ignorant of her last dwelling-place,_ _Standing before the thought_ _Tears must be our guide._
The person who had sent "The Prince Yearning after the Buried" wrote:
_How she must have wandered seeking the unfindable_ _In the unfamiliar fields of bamboo grasses,_ _Vainly weeping!_
Reading these poems my brother, who had followed the funeral that night, composed a poem:
_Before my vision_ _The fire and smoke of burning_ _Arose and died again._ _To bamboo fields there is no more returning,_ _Why seek there in vain?_
It snowed for many days, and I thought of the nun who lived on Mount Yoshino, to whom I wrote:
_Snow has fallen_ _And you cannot have_ _Even the unusual sight of men_ _Along the precipitous path of the Peak of Yoshino._
On the Sociable month of the next year father was looking forward with happy expectation to the night when he might expect an appointment as Governor of a Province. He was disappointed, and a person who might have shared our joy wrote to me, saying:
"I anxiously waited for the dawn with uncertain hope."
_The temple bell roused me from dreams_ _And waiting for the starlit dawn_ _The night, alas! was long as are_ _One hundred autumn nights._
I wrote back:
_Long was the night._ _The bell called from dreams in vain,_ _For it did not toll our realized hopes._
Towards the moon-hidden days [last days] of the Rice-Sprout month I went for a certain reason to a temple at Higashiyama.[42] On the way the nursery beds for rice-plants were filled with water, and the fields were green all over with the young growing rice. It was a smile-presenting sight. It gave a feeling of loneliness to see the dark shadow of the mountain close before me. In the lovely evenings water-rails chattered in the fields.
_The water-rails cackle as if they were knocking at the gate,_ _But who would be deceived into opening the door, saying,_ _Our friend has come along the mountain path in the dark night?_
As the place was near the Reizan Temple I went there to worship. Arriving so far I was fatigued, and drank from a stone-lined well beside the mountain temple, scooping the water into the hollow of my hand. My friend said, "I could never have enough of this water." "Is it the first time," I asked, "that you have tasted the satisfying sweetness of a mountain well drunk from the hollow of your hand?" She said, "It is sweeter than to drink from a shallow spring, which becomes muddy even from the drops which fall from the hand which has scooped it up."[43] We came home from the temple in the full brightness of evening sunshine, and had a clear view of Kioto below us.
My friend, who had said that a spring becomes muddy even with drops falling into it, had to go back to the Capital.
I was sorry to part with her and sent word the next morning:
_When the evening sun descends behind the mountain peak,_ _Will you forget that it is I who gaze with longing_ _Towards the place where you are?_
The holy voices of the priests reciting sutras in their morning service could be heard from my house and I opened the door. It was dim early dawn; mist veiled the green forest, which was thicker and darker than in the time of flowers or red leaves. The sky seemed clouded this lovely morning. Cuckoos were singing on the near-by trees.
_O for a friend--that we might see and listen together!_ _O the beautiful dawn in the mountain village!--_ _The repeated sound of cuckoos near and far away._
On that moon-hidden day cuckoos sung clamorously on trees towards the glen. "In the Royal City poets may be awaiting you, cuckoos, yet you sing here carelessly from morning till night!"
One who sat near me said: "Do you think that there is one person, at least, in the Capital who is listening to cuckoos, and thinking of us at this moment?"--and then:
_Many in the Royal City like to gaze on the calm moon._ _But is there one who thinks of the deep mountain_ _Or is reminded of us hidden here?_
I replied:
_In the dead of night, moon-gazing,_ _The thought of the deep mountain affrighted,_ _Yet longings for the mountain village_ _At all other moments filled my heart._
Once, towards dawn, I heard footsteps which seemed to be those of many persons coming down the mountain. I wondered and looked out. It was a herd of deer which came close to our dwelling. They cried out. It was not pleasant to hear them near by.
_It is sweet to hear the love-call of a deer to its mate,_ _In Autumn nights, upon the distant hills._
I heard that an acquaintance had come near my residence and gone back without calling on me. So I wrote:
_Even this wandering wind among the pines of the mountain--_ _I've heard that it departs with murmuring sound._
[That is, you are not like it. You do not speak when going away.]
In the Leaf-Falling month [September] I saw the moon more than twenty days old. It was towards dawn; the mountain-side was gloomy and the sound of the waterfall was all [I heard]. I wish that lovers [of nature] may see the after-dawn-waning moon in a mountain village at the close of an autumn night.
I went back to Kioto when the rice-fields, which had been filled with water when I came, were dried up, the rice being harvested. The young plants in their bed of water--the plants harvested--the fields dried up--so long I remained away from home.
'T was the moon-hidden of the Gods-absent month when I went there again for temporary residence. The thick grown leaves which had cast a dark shade were all fallen. The sight was heartfelt over all. The sweet, murmuring rivulet was buried under fallen leaves and I could see only the course of it.
_Even water could not live on--_ _So lonesome is the mountain_ _Of the leaf-scattering stormy wind._
[At about this time the author of this diary seems to have had some family troubles. Her father received no appointment from the King--they were probably poor, and her gentle, poetic nature did not incline her to seek useful friends at court; therefore many of the best years of her youth were spent in obscurity--a great contrast to the "Shining-Prince" dreams of her childhood.]
I went back to Kioto saying that I should come again the next Spring, could I live so long, and begged the nun to send word when the flowering-time had come.
It was past the nineteenth of the Ever-growing month of the next year [1026], but there were no tidings from her, so I wrote:
_No word about the blooming cherry-blossoms,_ _Has not the Spring come for you yet?_ _Or does the perfume of flowers not reach you?_
I made a journey, and passed many a moonlit night in a house beside a bamboo wood. Wind rustled its leaves and my sleep was disturbed.
_Night after night the bamboo leaves sigh,_ _My dreams are broken and a vague, indefinite sadness fills my heart._
In Autumn [1026] I went to live elsewhere and sent a poem:
_I am like dew on the grass--_ _And pitiable wherever I may be--_ _But especially am I oppressed with sadness_ _In a field with a thin growth of reeds._
After that time I was somehow restless and forgot about the romances. My mind became more sober and I passed many years without doing any remarkable thing. I neglected religious services and temple observances. Those fantastic ideas [of the romances] can they be realized in this world? If father could win some good position I also might enter into a much nobler life. Such unreliable hopes then occupied my daily thoughts.
At last[44] father was appointed Governor of a Province very far in the East.
[Here the diary skips six years. The following is reminiscent.]
He [father] said: "I was always thinking that if I could win a position as Governor in the neighbourhood of the Capital I could take care of you to my heart's desire. I would wish to bring you down to see beautiful scenery of sea and mountain. Moreover, I wished that you could live attended beyond [the possibilities] of our [present] position. Our Karma relation from our former world must have been bad. Now I have to go to so distant a country after waiting so long! When I brought you, who were a little child, to the Eastern Province [at his former appointment], even a slight illness caused me much trouble of mind in thinking that should I die, you would wander helpless in that far country. There were many fears in a stranger's country, and I should have lived with an easier mind had I been alone. As I was then accompanied by all my family, I could not say or do what I wanted to say or do, and I was ashamed of it. Now you are grown up [she was twenty-five years old] and I am not sure that I can live long.
It is not so unusual a fate to be helpless in the Capital, but the saddest thing of all would be to wander in the Eastern Province like any country-woman.[45] There are no relatives in the Capital upon whom we could rely to foster you, yet I cannot refuse the appointment which has been made after such long waiting. So you must remain here, and I must depart for Eternity.--Oh, in what way may I provide a way for you to live in the Capital decently!"
Night and day he lamented, saying these things, and I forgot all about flowers or maple leaves, grieving sadly, but there was no help for it.
He went down[46] on the thirteenth of the Seventh month, 1032.
For several days before that I could not remain still in my own room, for I thought it difficult to see him again.
On that day [the 13th] after restless hours, when the [time for] parting came, I had lifted the blind and my eye met his, from which tears dropped down. Soon he had passed by.[47] My eyes were dim with tears and soon I concealed myself in bed [tears were bad manners]. A man who had gone to see him off returned with a poem written on a bit of pocket paper.
A message from her father:
_If I could do as I wish_ _I could acknowledge more profoundly_ _The sorrow of departing in Autumn._
[The last line has, of course, reference to his age and the probability of never returning.]
I could not read the poem to the end.
In the happier time I had often tried to compose halting poems [literally, of broken loins], but at present I had no word to say.
_--never began to think in this world even for_ _a moment from you to part. Alas!_
No person came to my side and I was very lonely and forlorn musing and guessing where he would be at every moment. As I knew the road he was taking [the same which is described in this journal], I thought of him the more longingly and with greater heart-shrinking. Morning and evening I looked towards the sky-line of the eastern mountains.
In the Leaf-Falling month I went to the temple at Udzumaza [Korinji] to pass many days.
We came upon two men's palanquins in the road from Ichijo, which had stopped there. They must have been waiting for some one to catch up with them. When I passed by they sent an attendant with the message: "Flower-seeing go?--we suppose."
I thought it would be awkward not to reply to such a slight matter, and answered:
_Thousand kinds[48]--_ _To be like them in the fields of Autumn._
I stayed in the temple for seven days, but could think of nothing but the road to the East.
I prayed to the Buddha, saying: "There is no way to change the present, but grant that we may meet again peacefully after this parting"--and I thought the Buddha would pity and grant my prayer.
It was midwinter. It rained all day. In the night a cloud-turning wind blew terribly and the sky cleared. The moon became exquisitely bright, and it was sad to see the tall reeds near the house broken and blown down by the wind.
_Dead stalks of reeds must be reminded of good Autumn days._ _In midwinter depths the tempest lays them low,_ _Confused and broken._
["Their fate is like my own," is intangibly expressed in this poem.]
A messenger arrived from the East.
Father's letter:
"I wandered through the Province [Hitachi, now Ibarakiken] going into every Shinto shrine and saw a wide field with a beautiful river running through it.[49] There was a beautiful wood. My first thought was of you, and to make you see it, and I asked the name of that grove. 'The grove of Longing After One's Child' was the answer. I thought of the one who had first named it and was extremely sad. Alighting from my horse I stood there for two hours.
_After leaving--_ _Like me he must have yearned_ _Sorrowful to see--_ _The forest of Longing After One's Child."_
To see that letter is a sadder thing than to have seen the forest.
[The poem sent in return presents difficulties in the way of translation as there is a play upon words, literally it is something like this:]
The grove of "Longing After One's Child"; left; Father-caressed[50] Mountain; [Chichibusan] hard Eastern way--
_The grove of Longing After One's Child--_ _Hearing of it I think of the Father-caressed Mountain:_ _Towards it hard is the Eastern way_ _For a child left [here alone]._
Thus I passed days in doing nothing, and I began to think of going to temples [making pilgrimages]. Mother was a person of extremely antiquated mind. She said: "Oh, dreadful is the Hatsusé Temple! What should you do if you were caught by some one at the Nara ascent? Ishiyama too! Sekiyama Pass [near Lake Biwa] is very dreadful! Kurama-san [the famous mountain], oh, dreadful to bring you there! You may go there when father comes back."
As mother says so, I can go only to Kiyomidzu Temple.[51] My old habits of romantic indulgence were not dead yet, and I could not fix my mind on religious thoughts as I ought.
In the equinoctial week there was a great tumult [of festival], so great a noise that I was even afraid of it, and when I lay asleep I dreamt there was a priest within the enclosure before the altar, in blue garments with loose brocade hood and brocade shoes. He seemed to be the intendant of the temple: "You, being occupied with vain thoughts, are not praying for happiness in the world to come," he said indignantly, and went behind the curtain. I awoke startled, yet neither told any one what I had dreamt, nor thought about it much.
My mother had two one-foot-in-diameter bronze mirrors cast and made a priest take them for us to the Hatsusé Temple. Mother told the priest to pass two or three days in the temple especially praying that a dream might be vouchsafed about the future state of this woman [the daughter]. For that period I was made to observe religious purity [i.e. abstain from animal food.]
The priest came back to tell the following:
"I was reluctant to return without having even a dream, and after bowing many times and performing other ceremonies I went to sleep. There came out from behind the curtain a graceful holy lady in beautiful garments. She, taking up the offered mirrors, asked me if no letters were affixed to these mirrors. I answered in the most respectful manner, 'There were no letters. I was told only to offer these.' 'Strange!' she said. 'Letters are to be added. See what is mirrored in one, it creates pity to look at it.' I saw her weep bitterly and saw appear in the mirror shadows of people rolling over in lamentation. 'To see these shadows makes one sad, but to see this makes one happy,' and she held up the other mirror. There, the misu was fresh green and many-coloured garments were revealed below the lower edge of it. Plum-and cherry-blossoms were in flower. Nightingales were singing from tree to tree."
I did not even listen to his story nor question him as to how things seemed in his dream. Some one said, "Pray to the Heavenly Illuminating Honoured Goddess," and my irreverent mind thought, "Where is she? Is she a Goddess or a Buddha?"
At first I said so, but afterwards grew more discreet and asked some one about her, who replied: "She is a goddess, and takes up her abode at Isé.[52] The goddess is also worshipped by the Provincial Governor of Kii. She is worshipped at the ancestor shrine in the Imperial Court."
I could not by any means get to Isé. How could I bow before the Imperial shrine? I could never be allowed to go there. The idea flowed through my mind to pray for the heavenly light.
A relative of mine became a nun, and entered the Sugaku Temple. In winter I sent her a poem:
_Even tears arise for your sake_ _When I think of the mountain hamlet_ _Where snow-storms will be raging._
Reply:
_I seem to have a glimpse of you_ _Coming to me through the dark wood,_ _When close over head is Summer's growth of leaves._
1036. Father, who had gone down towards the East, came back at last. He settled down at Nishiyama, and we all went there. We were very happy. One moon-bright night we talked all the night through:
_Such nights as this exist!_ _As if it were for Eternity, I parted from you--_ _How sad was that Autumn!_
At this father shed tears [of happiness] abundantly, and answered me with a poem:
_That life grows dear and is lived with rejoicing_ _Which once was borne with hate and lamentation_
My joy knew no bounds when my waiting was at an end after the supposed parting "for Eternity," yet my father said: "It is ridiculous to lead a worldly life when one is very old. I used to feel so when I saw old men, but now it is my turn to be old, so I will retire from social life." As he said it with no lingering affection for this world, I felt quite alone.