Like a boatman crossing the Strait of Yura who has lost his oar and drifts, I do not know where the path of my love will lead.
Sone no Yoshitada (dates unknown) was a poet of the mid-Heian period, active in the latter half of the tenth century. He long held the lowly post of third officer of Tango province and was nicknamed 'Sotan'. Low in rank but proud of his verse, he is remembered for turning up uninvited at a palace banquet of Retired Emperor En'yū and being thrown out. The poetry world of his day treated him as an outsider, but his fresh, unconventional diction was prized by later ages, and he is counted among the Thirty-six Poetic Immortals of the middle period. This poem is Shin Kokin Wakashū, Love I, 1071. The Yura strait is the mouth of the Yura River in Tango, the province where he served — a passage known for its fast tide, where boats were easily swept away. He turned the sea of his own posting into the preface of a love poem.
A love poem in which four fifths of the thirty-one syllables are sea and boat. A boatman crossing the Yura strait has lost his oar; pushed by the fast tide, no one knows where the boat will go. All of this is a preface leading to 'not knowing where it leads', and love itself appears only in the last seven syllables. There is no word of grief and no glimpse of the other person — only the picture of a boat that has lost its means of steering, carried along by the tide. What will become of this love, he can no longer decide. Unable to decide, the boat is nevertheless moving. Unease and a strange stillness of surrender are folded into a single scene.
What drew us most to this poem is that a love poem with not one word of lament says everything about a love whose destination is unknown, using only the picture of a boat that has lost its oar. We read the lost oar not as an accident but as something he let go of himself. The song begins on the deck of the last ferry: the harbor lights grow distant, and it was he who got on board without deciding where he was going. Leaving it to the tide, the night he let go of the rudder. After the poem is sung, the chorus carries the preface's sea into the present — 'I want to see you, that is all, and I still cannot see where I am headed'. Drifting or moving forward, only the sound of the waves answers; the boat rocks on a night with no shore. In the second verse he reads a letter with no reply over and over on the railing, and looks up for stars though he does not know how to read them — the modern heir of the old boatman who steered by the stars and lost his oar. In the bridge he makes the excuse that with a rudder he would not have wandered, then corrects himself: he threw the rudder away in order to head toward you. The poem says only that the destination is unknown; it never says sad or afraid. The lyrics follow that manner and put no unease into words: even so the boat moves on, toward where you are, and when night lifts the shore will come into view. It never says he arrives. Only that he can see it. A poet who made his own posting's strait the scene of a love poem, a thousand years ago, set down again on the railing of a night ferry.
由良の門を（新古今集/曽禰好忠・百人一首46番）Garu JP
最終の フェリーの デッキで
港の 灯りが 遠くなる
どこへ 向かうか 決めないまま
乗ったのは 自分だった
潮の 流れに 任せて
舵を 手放した 夜
由良の門を 渡る舟人 かぢを絶え
ゆくへも知らぬ 恋の道かな
きみに 会いたい それだけで
行き先は まだ 見えない
流されて いるのか 進んで いるのか
波の 音だけが 答える
舟は 揺れる 岸の ない 夜に
返事の ない 手紙を 何度も
読み返す 手すりの 上
星を 探して 見上げるくせに
読み方は 知らない
戻る 港も 着く 岸も
まだ 名前が ない
由良の門を 渡る舟人 かぢを絶え
ゆくへも知らぬ 恋の道かな
きみに 会いたい それだけで
夜を 渡って いる
流されて いるのか 進んで いるのか
潮の 速さは 教えない
舟は 揺れる きみの いない 海で
舵が あれば 迷わなかった
そう 言い訳を して
でも 舵を 捨てたのは
きみに 向かう ためだった
由良の門を 渡る舟人 かぢを絶え
ゆくへも知らぬ 恋の道かな
きみに 会いたい それだけで
行き先は まだ 見えない
流されて いるのか 進んで いるのか
それでも 舟は 進む
きみの いる 方へ
恋の道かな……
夜が 明けたら 岸が 見える
Yura no to o (Shin-Kokin-shu / Sone no Yoshitada, Hyakunin Isshu No. 46) Garu JP
On the deck of the last ferry
the harbor lights grow distant
Without deciding where I was going,
it was me who got on board
Leaving it to the tide,
the night I let go of the rudder
Like a boatman crossing the Yura strait who has lost his oar,
I drift down the road of this love, not knowing where it leads
I want to see you — that is all
and I still cannot see where I am headed
Am I drifting, or moving forward?
Only the sound of the waves answers
The boat rocks, on a night with no shore
A letter with no reply, read over and over
on top of the railing
I look up searching for stars,
though I don't know how to read them
The harbor to return to, the shore to reach —
neither has a name yet
Like a boatman crossing the Yura strait who has lost his oar,
I drift down the road of this love, not knowing where it leads
I want to see you — that is all
and I am crossing the night
Am I drifting, or moving forward?
The speed of the tide will not tell me
The boat rocks, on a sea where you are not
With a rudder I wouldn't have wandered —
I tell myself that excuse
But I threw the rudder away
so I could head toward you
Like a boatman crossing the Yura strait who has lost his oar,
I drift down the road of this love, not knowing where it leads
I want to see you — that is all
and I still cannot see where I am headed
Am I drifting, or moving forward?
Even so, the boat moves on
toward where you are
The road of this love...
When night lifts, the shore will come into view