on his knees. Like the ransomed prisoner in Po Chü-i’s poem,[1] though returning to his native place, he had left wife and child to shift for themselves amid the Tartar hordes. His sister Ateki heard him sobbing and could well understand his dismay. The plight of those who had remained at Hizen was indeed a wretched one. Most of all she pitied the few old followers and servants who had consented to come with them from the Capital long ago, believing that in five years they would be back again in their homes. To leave these faithful old people in the lurch seemed the basest of treacheries. They had always (she and her brother) been used to speaking of the City as their ‘home’; but now that they were drawing near to it they realized that though it was indeed their native place, there was not within it one house where they were known, one friend or acquaintance to whom they could turn. For this lady’s sake they had left what for most of their lives had been their world, their only true home—had committed their lives to the hazard of wind and wave; all this without a moment’s reflection or misgiving. And now that their precious cargo was within hail of port, what were they to do with her? How were they to approach her family, make known her presence, prove her identity? Endlessly though they had discussed these points during the journey, they could arrive at no conclusion, and it was with a sense of helplessness and bewilderment that they hurried into the City.
In the Ninth Ward they chanced to hear of an old acquaintance of their mother’s who was still living in the neighbourhood, and here they managed to procure temporary lodgings. The Ninth Ward does indeed count as part of Kyōto; but it is an immense distance from the centre, and no one of any consequence lives there. Thus in their effort to find
- ↑ See my 170 Chinese Poems, p. 130.
