Diaries of Court Ladies
We crossed it In a boat, and it is the Province of Sagami. The mountain range called Nishitomi is like folding screens with good pictures. On the left hand we saw a very beautiful beach with long-drawn curves of white waves. There was a place there called Morokoshi-ga-Hara[1] [Chinese Field] where sands are wonderfully white. Two or three days we journeyed along that shore. A man said: "In Summer pale and deep Japanese pinks bloom there and make the field like brocade. As it is Autumn now we cannot see them." But I saw some pinks scattered about blooming pitiably. They said: "It is funny that Japanese pinks are blooming in the Chinese field."
There is a mountain called Ashigara [Hakoné] which extends for ten and more miles and is covered with thick woods even to its base. We could have only an occasional glimpse of the sky. We lodged in a hut at the foot of the mountain. It was a dark moonless
- ↑ According to "Sagami-Fūdoki," or "The Natural Features of Sagami Province," this district was in ancient times inhabited by Koreans. The natives could not distinguish a Korean from a Chinese, hence the name of Chinese Field. A temple near Oiso still keeps the name of Kōraiji, or the Korean temple.
take, or more probably an insertion by a later smatterer of literary knowledge who inherited the manuscript.
Narihira's poem is addressed to a sea-gull called Miyakodori, which literally means bird of the capital. Narihira had abandoned Kioto and was wandering towards the East. Just then his heart had been yearning after the Royal City and also after his wife, and that feeling must have been intensified by the name of the bird. (Cf. The Isé-monogatari, Section 9.)
Miyakodori! alas, that word
Fills my heart again with longing,
Even you I ask, O bird,
Does she still live, my beloved?
