三崎護（吉譲）

詞書

尚友堂小集同賦王■（昭）君

本文

馬上琵琶曲。
調成未散煩。
千行沾袖涙。
萬里向胡行。
風土多驚目。
山川看助情。
人生誠有命。
不為主恩軽（輕）。

署名

吉譲

読み下だし

英訳

Astride her horse; the sound of biwa music.
Her tune is played, but her angst is never dispelled.
A thousand streams of tears wet her sleeves.
Ten thousand li -- her journey to the Tartar frontier.
The scenery has so much to surprise her eyes;
The mountains and rivers evoke in her such feeling.
In life there's truly such a thing as Fate;
It's not that her master was ever lacking kindness.

Title: On this anthology, see the notes to SBK 1. The octave above was likely inspired by a Tu Fu poem titled "Thoughts on Historical Sites: Wang Chao-chün." Wang Chao-chün 王昭君, an imperial concubine, was sent by the Emperor as a gift to a chieftain of the Turkic Hsiung-nu tribe in 33 B.C. The emperor was happy at the time to give her away, as he had never even asked to see her, being under the mistaken impression that she was not an attractive woman: Wang had neglected to follow the palace custom of bribing the court painter who painted the portraits of concubines, so that the resulting work did not show a pleasing likeness. But when the Emperor finally laid eyes on the lady and saw her beauty he wanted to keep her for himself. By this time, it was too late, for the Hsiung-nu chief refused to relinquish her.

Line one: Wang is often depicted in paintings holding a biwa, a lute-like musical instrument.

Line two: The final two characters in this line have not been identified with certainty. For the final three characters, the Tanzaku shūei text gives the phrase 未友行 (possibly, "the Song of No Return," with the 友 character being an error for 反 or 返), but this would cause the line to end with the same rhyme word as that found in line four, creating a serious prosodic defect. Members of the Heian jinbutsushi research group have suggested a provisional correction instead to 未散煩, which is reflected in our translation. It is difficult for us to feel confident in this revision either, as the final word 煩 is not in the same rhyme category(庚) as the other three rhyme words.

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