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Audio: NHK Creative Library
Read by LibriVox volunteer Larry Wilson.
Audio courtesy of LibriVox (Public Domain).
前大僧正慈円
おほけなく
憂き世の民に
おほふかな
わがたつ杣に
墨染の袖
わかたつそ
まにすみそ
めのそて
おおけ
- Poem 95
- おほけなく
憂き世の民に
おほふかな
わがたつ杣に 墨染の袖
Author: Former Senior High Priest Jien (1155–1225)
Source: Senzai Wakashū, Miscellaneous
- English Verse Translation
- Unfit to rule this wicked world With all its pomp and pride, I'd rather in my plain black
robe A humble priest abide, Far up the mountain side.
— William N. Porter, 1909
- Modern Translation
- How bold it is of me — yet I spread my ink-black sleeves to shelter the people of this troubled world.
- Commentary
- The period spanning the end of the Heian era and the beginning of the Kamakura era was marked by natural disasters, epidemics, famine, and rampant banditry — a time of transition from imperial court rule to the Kamakura shogunate, punctuated by repeated civil unrest. The headnote in the Senzai Wakashū simply reads "topic unknown," but Jien likely composed this poem lamenting the state of the world, moved by a wish to save its people through the power of Buddhism.
- About the Poet
- The Former Senior High Priest Jien was the sixth son of Fujiwara no Tadamichi (Poem 76), and entered the priesthood while still a child. He became a renowned monk, serving four separate terms as Tendai Zasu, the highest-ranking abbot of Enryaku-ji Temple on Mount Hiei. He also wrote the Gukanshō, an early-Kamakura-period work of historical commentary, believed to have been written in part to dissuade Retired Emperor Go-Toba (Poem 99) from raising arms against the shogunate.
- Former Senior High Priest Jien'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)
What I put into these ink-black sleeves
is not only sorrow for the world.
It is a quiet prayer of compassion,
offered for all who wander, lost and suffering.
- 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).