Wada no hara
Yasoshima kakete
Kogi idenu to
Hito ni wa tsugeyo
Ama no tsuribune.
THE PRIVY COUNCILLOR TAKAMURA
Oh! Fishers in your little boats,
Quick! tell my men, I pray,
They’ll find me at Yasoshima,
I’m being rowed away
Far off across the bay.
Takamura, a well-known scholar, rose from poverty to riches on being appointed a Custom-house officer for the ships trading to and from China. His enemies reported him to the Emperor as an extortioner and a thief, and he was deported to Yasoshima, a group of small islands off the coast; he is said to have composed this song and sung it to the fishing-boats, as he was being carried off. He was afterwards pardoned and reinstated, dying in the year 852.
