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Audio: NHK Creative Library
Read by LibriVox volunteer Larry Wilson.
Audio courtesy of LibriVox (Public Domain).
曽禰好忠
由良のとを
渡る舟人
かぢを絶え
ゆくへも知らぬ
恋の道かな
ゆくへもし
らぬこひの
みちかな
ゆら
- Poem 46
- 由良のとを
渡る舟人
かぢを絶え
ゆくへも知らぬ 恋の道かな
Author: Sone no Yoshitada (dates unknown)
Source: Shin Kokin Wakashū, Love
- English Verse Translation
- The fishing-boats are tossed about, When stormy winds blow strong; With rudder lost, how
can they reach The port for which they long? So runs the old love-song.
— William N. Porter, 1909
- Modern Translation
- Like a boatman who has lost his oar on the swift straits of Yura — I drift, not knowing where my love is taking me.
- Commentary
- This poem expresses the poet's bewilderment on the path of love, comparing himself to a sailor who has lost his rudder at the mouth of a treacherous river.
- About the Poet
- Sone no Yoshitada was a pioneer who actively incorporated archaic words from the Man'yōshū into his poetry, broadening the expressive range of waka, and who was among the first to compose "hundred-poem sequences" (hyakushuuta). His innovative style, however, was not understood by the aristocrats of his time and was seen as heretical rather than admired. Later generations came to value his poetry highly, and he has more poems included in the Shika Wakashū than any other poet. He served as junior secretary of Tango Province, so the Yura River — which flows through present-day Maizuru and Miyazu in Kyoto Prefecture into the Sea of Japan — would have been a familiar sight to him.
- Sone no Yoshitada's Chart of the Heart
-
A chart and a modern-language reflection of the poet's inner feelings.
The Poet's Feelings (A Personal Interpretation)
A boat that has lost its oars
drifts helplessly on the waves.My heart in love feels the same —
wandering, searching for you, with nowhere to land.
- Poem Illustration
-
This image is based on an illustration from William N. Porter's A Hundred Verses from Old Japan, his 1909 English translation of the Hyakunin Isshu published in England, colorized and reworked using Adobe Firefly (generative AI).