Yataro Iwasaki · Tosa
Person
A Tosa-born entrepreneur who experienced imprisonment in the Bakumatsu and later founded Mitsubishi. Before the image of the industrial founder, his poems reveal a young man shaped by provincial injustice, ambition, and family feeling.
Translation
My own survival need hardly be spoken of; thinking of my white-haired mother, tears fall, and I long to meet her face at least in a dream.
Reading
This shows not the later tycoon Iwasaki Yataro, but a young man of Tosa in prison. His feeling for his mother is unexpectedly soft. Read together with Yataro Iwasaki, the poem is not only a matter of literal meaning; it shows resolve turning inward inside confinement. With the figure in mind, what remains after reading is resolve, solitude, and the beauty that often belongs to the defeated side.
Background
A Chinese poem written when Iwasaki Yataro was imprisoned in the Ansei period. Anger over Tosa politics, injustice, and family feeling intersect. A Tosa-born entrepreneur who experienced imprisonment in the Bakumatsu and later founded Mitsubishi. The words carry the inner pressure of someone caught in Bakumatsu politics, war, execution, exile, or the losses that followed the Restoration. Even where the transmission is uncertain, they quietly preserve the pain of the age.
Source / Transmission Wording and readings may differ by transmission; this page treats the text as one circulated form.
