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- Oku no Hosomichi - 奥の細道 - おくのほそ道
The Narrow Road to the Deep North -
. Oku no Hosomichi - 奥の細道 - Introduction .
5月4日
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- - - Station 17 - Takekuma no Matsu 武隈 - - -
My heart leaped with joy when I saw the celebrated pine tree of Takekuma, its twin trunks shaped exactly as described by the ancient poets. I was immediately reminded of the priest Noin who had grieved to find upon his second visit this same tree cut down and thrown into the River Natori as bridge-piles by the newly-appointed governor of the province. This tree had been planted, cut, and replanted several times in the past, but just when I came to see it myself, it was in its original shape after a lapse of perhaps a thousand years, the most beautiful shape one could possibly think of for a pine tree. The poet Kyohaku wrote as follows at the time of my departure to express his good wishes for my journey:
Don't forget to show my master
The famous pine of Takekuma,
Late cherry blossoms
Of the far north.
The following poem I wrote was, therefore, a reply:
Three months after we saw
Cherry blossoms together
I came to see the glorious
Twin trunks of the pine.
Tr. by Nobuyuki Yuasa
source : terebess.hu/english
岩沼に宿る。
武隈の松にこそめ覚る心地はすれ。根は土際より二木にわかれて、昔の姿うしなはずとしらる。先能因法師思ひ出、往昔むつのかみにて下りし人、此木を伐て、名取川の橋杭にせられたる事などあればにや。松は此たび跡もなしとは詠たり。代々あるは伐、あるひは植継などせしと聞に、今将千歳のかたちとゝのほひて、めでたき松のけしきになん侍し。
武隈の松みせ申せ遅桜と挙白と云ものゝ餞別したりければ、
桜より松は二木を三月越シ sakura yori matsu wa futaki o mitsukigoshi (mitsuki-goshi)
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. Nōin、Nooin Hoshi, No-In Hoshi 能因法師 Priest Noin .
(988-1051)
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第26回「奥の細道」岩沼サミット
Haiku Meeting at Iwanuma, Miyagi - in honor of the Takekuma Pines
source : www.city.iwanuma.miyagi.jp
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Natorigawa 名取川 River Natori
I don’t know how many of the
Natorigawa’s shoals I will cross,
maybe seven, maybe eight of them –
but when night comes, I’ll cross them.
Tr. Edward Kamens
Natorigawa, “The River of Scandal,” is
in far-off Michinoku, they say: and
oh how terrible it is to have my name
be used in a way it does not deserve!
Tr. Edward Kamens
Mibu no Tadamine 壬生忠岑
MORE about the River
source : tohokupillows.wordpress.com
------------------------------------- quote - comment by Scott Watson
Cross the Natori River, entering Sendai.
It is the day to thatch with sweet flags. Finding an inn, [we] stay four or five days. There is an artist here named Kaemon. [We] hear that his heart has a joyous ring. A good man to know. [He] remembers places of note that are long since obscure, and he shows around one day. Hagi [bush clover] is thick at Miyagino, and we can sense what the scene must be like in autumn. At Tamada, Yokono, Tsutsuji-ga-oka asebi [horse drunk tree] is in bloom. Enter a pine woods where no sun penetrates, a place called Kinoshita [under trees]. Long ago, too, the dewfall was such that "Attendants! An umbrella. . . ." was composed. Praying at Yakushidō and the Tenjin Shrine, come to the day's end. Kaemon sends us off with drawings he made of places here and there in Matsushima and Shiogama. [And he] makes us a farewell gift of two pair of waraji [straw sandals] with cords dyed dark blue. That is why [he] is known as a man of utmost cultivation, a fact shown in what is here attained.
Feet bound with
blue flag cords.
waraji.
Notes
Kaemon: Kitanoya Kaemon.
He was a high ranking student of haikai poet Oyodo Michikaze. He was also a woodblock artist and ran a bookstore that specialized in haikai books.
Hagi: Bush clover has tiny white or deep pink blossoms and has been a famous early autumn flower since ancient times. It is mentioned 125 times in the ancient anthology The Manyōshū. Courtiers off to autumnal flower viewing gatherings sometimes decorated themselves with spray of hagi or dyed their robes hagi colors.
Asebi: A plant with small temple bell shaped flowers. It is mentioned in The Manyōshū. If horses eat the plant they suffer, thus the ideograms that read "horse drunk tree" (drunk = sick drunk).
Waraji: Straw sandals. The Yakushi Nyorai (Medicine/healing Bodhisattva) Bashō visited is thought to strengthen legs, which is why travelers petition there and why the offering they make is straw sandals. It might be of interest for some readers to know that a traveler on foot wore out a few pair of sandals each day.
I tried walking in a pair for half a day before blisters rose up between my toes.
Scott Watson, facebook, April 2024
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source : itoyo/basho
The two pines at Takekuma 武隈の松
. Genji Monogatari 源氏物語 .
Lady Akashi to Genji
Whose ends are far
the twin-leaf little pine
now torn away -
I wonder when the day will come
to gaze on its lofty shade.
Genji answering Lady Akashi
Since its roots grow deep
that long since began to grow
the little pine tree
by the Takekuma pines
for a thousand years shall stand.
Tr. Cranstone
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