Yorinori Matsudaira · 宍戸藩
Original
さして行く
Person
Lord of Shishido domain, sent to pacify the Tengu Party crisis but forced to die by seppuku under shogunate suspicion. Not a militant of the Tengu Party itself, but a branch-domain lord swallowed by the crisis. His mission of pacification turned into suspicion and punishment; the bamboo bow that rots before being released becomes the image of an unfulfilled task.
Translation
The bamboo bow that should have gone forth to be drawn has rotted away, left beside the scarecrow.
Poetic Shape A Japanese death poem is less a final explanation than a last shape given to feeling. Its brevity matters: a life is not narrated, but compressed into a few lines that leave room for silence.
Reading
Read as the final poem of a man who was not allowed to act, the image cuts deeply. The bamboo bow is also the self left unused before its mission could be fulfilled. Rotting beside a scarecrow is not valor, but the sorrow of being prevented from moving.
Background
Yorinori Matsudaira, lord of Shishido domain, went toward Mito to pacify the Tengu Party crisis. The shogunate suspected him of sympathy with the rebels and ordered him to die by seppuku. He was not a Tengu Party militant, but his death shows how widely the crisis spread.
Source / Transmission Wording and readings may differ by transmission; this page treats the text as one circulated form.
Further Reading
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