Yae Yamamoto · Aizu

Original

明日の夜は
何国の誰か
ながむらん
なれし御城に
残す月影

Person

A woman of Aizu who defended Tsurugajo Castle and later lived into the Meiji era as Yae Niijima. Yae Yamamoto gives the site a different kind of sorrow: not a death poem, but the loss carried by one who survived. After enduring the siege, she asks who will gaze on the familiar castle after surrender. The moonlight remains beautiful, while the people who belong there are being displaced.

Translation

Tomorrow night, who in what land will gaze at this moon? I leave only its light upon the castle I knew so well.

Poetic Shape

Tanka compresses feeling into five short movements, traditionally heard as a 5-7-5-7-7 rhythm. Its force is in the turn from image to emotion, and in what the poem leaves unsaid.

Reading

This is not a death poem, but a poem of watching a castle pass out of one's hands. Yae asks who will gaze at the moon tomorrow, though she already knows the answer may not be her own people. Because the moonlight remains unchanged, the pain of surrendering home becomes sharper.

Background

Remembered as a poem Yae Yamamoto carved into the white wall of Tsurugajo on the night before surrender, using a hairpin or kogai. Yae had fought from inside the castle, not watched defeat from a distance. The poem carries the loss borne by a survivor and the bitterness of leaving a beautiful moon behind.