A Soldier’s Regrets on Leaving Home
When I left to keep guard on the frontier
(For such was the monarch’s decree),
My mother, with skirt uplifted,140
Drew near and fondled me;
And my father, the hot tears streaming
His snow-white beard adown,
Besought me to tarry, crying:—
“Alas! when thou art gone,
“When thou leavest our gate in the morning,
No other sons have I,
And mine eyes will long to behold thee
As the weary years roll by;
“So tarry but one day longer,
And let me find some relief
In speaking and hearing thee speak to me!”
So wail’d the old man in his grief.
And on either side came pressing
My wife and my children dear,
Fluttering like birds, and with garments
Besprinkled with many a tear;
And clasped my hands and would stay me,
For ’twas so hard to part;
But mine awe of the sovereign edict
Constrained my loving heart.
I went; yet each time the pathway
O’er a pass through the mountains did wind,
I’d turn me round—ah! so lovingly!—
And ten thousand times gaze behind.
But farther still, and still farther,
Past many a land I did roam,
And my thoughts were all thoughts of sadness,
All loving, sad thoughts of home;—
Till I came to the shores of Sumi,
Where the sovereign gods I prayed,
With off’rings so humbly offered—
And this the prayer that I made:—
“Being mortal, I know not how many
The days of my life may be;
And how the perilous pathway
That leads o’er the plain of the sea,
“Past unknown islands will bear me:—
But grant that while I am gone
No hurt may touch father or mother,
Or the wife now left alone!”
Yes, such was my prayer to the sea-gods;
And now the unnumbered oars,
And the ship and the seamen to bear me
From breezy Naníha’s shores,
Are there at the mouth of the river:—
Oh! tell the dear ones at home,
That I’m off as the day is breaking
To row o’er the ocean foam.
Anon.
Footnotes
132 Such frantic demonstrations of grief are very frequently mentioned in the early poetry, and sound strangely to those who are accustomed to the more than English reserve of the modern Japanese. Possibly, as in Europe, so in Japan, there may have been a real change of character in this respect.
133 The Mikado is meant. The feudal system did not grow up till many centuries later.
134 The N-á-h-i are sounded like our English word nigh, and therefore form but one syllable to the ear.
135 Anciently (and this custom is still followed in some parts of Japan) the hair of female children was cut short at the neck and allowed to hang down loosely till the age of eight. At twelve or thirteen the hair was generally bound up, though this ceremony was often frequently postponed till marriage. At the present day, the methods of doing the hair of female children, of grown-up girls, and of married women vary considerably.
136 The original of this stanza is obscure, and the native commentators have no satisfactory interpretation to offer.
137 In the original the title is “The Beggar’s Dialogue,” there being two poems, of which that here translated is the second. The first one, which is put into the mouth of an unmarried beggar, who takes a cheerier view of poverty, is not so well fitted for translation into English.
138 Because, according to the Buddhist doctrine of perpetually recurring births, it is at any given time more probable that the individual will come into the world in the shape of one of the lower animals.
139 A literal translation of the Japanese idiom.
140 The Japanese commentators are puzzled over the meaning of the passage “with skirt uplifted, drew near and fondled me.” To the European mind there seems to be nothing obscure in it. The mother probably lifted her skirt to wipe her eyes, when she was crying. It is evidently a figurative way of saying that the mother was crying.