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Tosa Nikki: from the record of the Ninth Day of the First Month

Presently, the boat passed the Uda pine woods. It was impossible to imagine how many trees might be standing there, or how many thousands of years they might have lived. The waves came up to their roots, and cranes flew back and forth among the branches. Too deeply moved to admire the spectacle in silence, one passenger composed a poem that went something like this:


[12]

 miwataseba

matsu no ure goto ni

 sumu tsuru wa

chiyo no dochi to zo

omoubera naru

 They must think of them

as friends for eternity −

 those cranes far away

dwelling wherever a pine

offers a bough for a home.

 

The poem was not the equal of the scene.

 

− Ki no Tsurayuki 紀貫之Tosa Nikki 土佐日記 (The Tosa Diary)

“[i Ninth Day]” (Ninth Day of the First Month)

 

Translated by Helen Craig McCullough

(see McCullough 1985)

 

 

Further notes by the blog author

Tosa Nikki is the first kana 仮名 (Japanese) diary in Japanese literary tradition. Written around 935 in a voice of an anonymous woman by a prominent poet Ki no Tsurayuki (866?–945?; Hyakunin Isshu 35), the diary records a fifty-five day journey from Tosa 土佐 province (modern-day Kōchi 高知 prefecture) to the capital (modern-day Kyōto 京都), which the author undertook at the end of his tenure as Governor of Tosa (土佐守Tosa no kami).