いらっしゃい！

This is a blog devoted to translating 更級日記 Sarashina Nikki.

The Sarashina Diary is the account of a young woman's journey from the provincial backwater of her birth to the flowering cultural center of the capital she had always dreamed of. It is a work of the celebrated 平安 Heian period in Japanese history, a span of a mere hundred, two hundred years about a millenia ago, when in the unlikely soil of the new capital in rude imitation of China's Great Metropolis Chang'an, among a small circle of hereditary aristocrats in one of the more isolated, uncivilized corners of the world--Japan--there arose a culture of refinement and sensibility, of subtle music and a dewy poignance; glorious, unfathomed, fleeting--for which precious astonishment there is no parallel in our collective history.

Today we call that ancient capital Kyoto, and Kazusa(上総の国), our author's birthplace, is the rich and populous Chiba prefecture on the very eastern lip of Tokyo. But a thousand years ago it was simply miyako, "the capital", and the bustling center of modern Japan still a dismal, depressing wilderness for our young heroine. When at the age of thirteen her father's appointment/exile as provincial governor came to a grateful end, her family's recall to court must have appeared a miraculous transfer from the ends to the earth to its center.

But even at a tender age, our narrator was more sensitive than giddy, and from the lonely end of her life's journey when the diary was composed, there was much more to remember in those first steps than the growing excitement of a steady approach to a girl's dream fulfilled...

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This is my translation, post by post, of the entire work from the classical Japanese. I know there is a no doubt excellent translation by Ivan Morris out there, but you won't see a line of it here. I've never read it, and won't allow myself to until the whole thing is done. I'm sure I'll make mistakes, embarassing red-eyed howlers of them, but I'm only a student, not an expert, and for me, this is above all a learning experience.

Don't worry too much, though. Outside of the rural junior high school where I teach English to the Youth of Japan, I haven't darkened the door of a classroom in almost four years, but my (modern) Japanese is very good, and I have been studying its willowy ancestor on and off for a while. I'll do my best, and I hope you'll enjoy exploring this fascinating cultural moment along with me. At the least, I have faith that the inherent quality of the original will defeat all my best efforts to muck it up.

Please feel free to criticize and comment, especially those of you who know more than me. This is an independent study, and I hunger for feedback. And expect also that though this site came into being solely to translate this work, I'll be posting more than that. Just don't ask me what yet.

Call me Azuma, the first word of the diary, the old poetic word for "east", and the destination of my own journey--here.

よろしくお願いします