Kojiki (Chamberlain, 1882)/Section 47

by Ō no Yasumaro

[Sect. XLVII.—Emperor Jim-mu (Part IV.—The Ukashi Brethren).]

So then there were in Uda two persons, Ukashi the Elder Brother and Ukashi the Younger Brother.^[1] So [His Augustness Kamu-yamato-ihare-biko] sent the crow eight feet [long] in advance to ask these persons, saying: “The august child of the Heavenly Deity has made a progress [hither]. Will ye respectfully serve him?” Hereupon Ukashi the Elder Brother waited for and shot at the messenger with a whizzing barb to made him turn back. So the place where the whizzing barb fell is called Kabura-zaki.^[2] Saying that he intended to wait for and smite [His Augustness Kamu-yamato-ihare-biko], he [tried to] collect an army. But being unable to collect an army, he said deceitfully that he would respectfully serve [His Augustuess Kamu-yamato-ihare-biko], and built a great palace,^[3] and in that palace set a pitfall, and waited. Then Ukashi the Younger Brother came out to^[4] [His Augustness Kamu-yamato-ihare-biko] beforehand, and made obeisance, saying: “Mine^[5] elder brother Ukashi the Elder Brother has shot at and turned back the messenger of the august child of the Heavenly Deity, and, intending to wait for and attack thee, has [tried to] collect an army; but, being unable to collect it, he has built a great palace, and set^[6] a gin within it, intending to wait for and catch thee. So I have come out to inform [thee of this].” Then the two persons His Augustness Michi-no-Omi,^[7] ancestor of the Ohotomo Chieftains,^[8] and His Augustness Ohokume,^[9] ancestor of the Kume Lords,^[10] summoned Ukashi the Elder Brother and reviled him, saying: “Into the great palace which thou^[11] hast built to respectfully serve [His Augustness Kamu-yamato-ihare-biko], be thou^[12] the first to enter, and declare plainly the manner in which thou intendest respectfully to serve him;”—and forthwith grasping the hilts of their cross-swords, playing with their spears,^[13] and fixing arrows [in their bows], they drove him in, whereupon he was caught in^[14] the gin which he himself had set, and died. So they forthwith pulled him out, and cut him in pieces. So the place is called Uda-no-Chihara.^[15] Having done thus, [His Augustness Kamu-yamato-ihare-biko] bestowed on his august army the whole of the great banquet presented [to him] by Ukashi the Younger Brother. At this time he sang, saying:

“The woodcock, for which I laid a woodcock-snare and waited in the high castle of Uda, strikes not against it; but a valiant whale strikes against it. If the elder wife ask for fish, slice off a little like the berries of the standing soba; if the younger wife ask for fish, slice off a quantity like the berries of the vigorous sakaki.”^[16]

“Ugh!^[17] pfui! dolt! This is saying thou rascal. Ah! pfui! dolt! This is laughing [him] to scorn.”

So Ukashi the Younger Brother (he is the ancestor of the Water-Directors of Uda).^[18]

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1. Ye-ukashi and Oto-ukashi. Ukashi, as in the other compounds where it occurs, is probably in reality the name of a place. Its etymology is doubtful.
2. I.e., Barb Point or Cape.
3. Or, hall.
4. The original has a respectful expression, which is elsewhere translated “waited on.”
5. The First Personal Pronoun is represented by the respectful character 僕, “servant.”
6. Literally, “spread.” This gin is supposed to have been of the kind whose top closes down after the man or animal has fallen into it.
7. I.e., “Grandee of the Way.” This gentile name is said in the “Chronicles” to have been bestowed on this worthy in consideration of his services as a guide to his master the Emperor on the occasion of the latter’s progress eastward.
8. See Sect. XXXIV, Note 12.
9. I.e., perhaps “Great Round Eyes,” supposed be a descendant of His Augustness Ama-tsu-kume (see however Sect. XXXIV, Note 7 for a discussion of the etymology of Kume).
10. See Sect. XXXIV, Note 13.
11. The expression i ga, here rendered “thou,” is, as Motowori remarks, “extremely hard to understand,” and its interpretation as an insulting form of the Second Personal Pronoun is merely tentative. Perhaps the text is corrupt.
12. The insulting Second Personal Pronoun ore is here employed.
13. Here again we have an expression written phonetically and of uncertain import. The translator has followed Motowori in tentatively rendering it according to the ideographic reading of the parallel passage of the “Chronicles.”
14. Literally “struck by.”
15. I.e. Uda’s Blood-Plain.
16. This Song is unusually difficult of comprehension: and the latest important commentator, Moribe, seems to show satisfactorily that all his predecessors, Motowori included, more or less misunderstood it. He had at least the advantage of coming after them, and the translator has followed his interpretation excepting with regard to isukuhashi, the Pillow-Word for “whale,” which is here rendered “valiant,” in accordance with the traditional view of its signification. The soba tree is identified by Motowori with the kaname-mochi, “Photinia glabra.” The saka-ki, taken together with its Prefix ichi (here rendered “vigorous”) is supposed in this place to signify, not the usual Cleyera japonica, but another species popularly known as the bishiya-gaki, whose English or Latin name the translator has failed to ascertain. It has a large berry, whereas the soba has a small one.—The following is the gist of Moribe’s exposition of the general signification of the Song: “If for Ukashi’s mean design to kill the Emperor in a gin there be sought a term of comparison in the whales and woodcock forming the Imperial banquet, then in lieu of the woodcock that he expected to catch in the trap that he set, that great whale, the Imperial host, has rushed up against it. Again if, as the fishermen’s wives might do, your (i.e., you soldiers’) wives ask you for fish, then let each of you give to his elder wife, of whom he must have grown weary, only a small and bony portion, and to his younger wife, who is doubtless his heart’s favourite, a good fleshy piece. So jocular a guess at the penchants of the young warriors excites their ardour, which they give vent to in the following shouts.”
17. Some of the Japanese originals of this string of Interjections are of uncertain import. The translator has been guided by Motowori’s conjectures, with which Moribe mostly agrees. The exclamations are supposed not to form part of the actual Song, but to proceed from the months of the Imperial soldiers. The words rendered “this is saying thou rascal” (such is apparently their meaning) and those rendered “this is laughing [him] to scorn” seem to be glosses as old as the text, which had already become obscure in the eighth century. They are not written altogether phonetically.
18. Uda no Mohitori. This tribe or guild of “water-directors” was entrusted with the charge of the water, the ice, and the gruel used in the Imperial household. In later times the word Mohitori was corrupted to Mondo.