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II. The Privy Councillor Takamura: Sangi Takamura

A Hundred Verses from Old Japan · 1 passage

1

Wada no hara Yasoshima kakete Kogi idenu to Hito ni wa tsugeyo Ama no tsuribune. OH! Fishers in your little boats, Quick! tell my men, I pray, They'll find me at Yasoshima, I'm being rowed away Far off across the bay. Takamura, a well-known scholar, rose from poverty to riches on being appointed a Custom-house officer for the ships trading to and from China. His enemies reported him to the Emperor as an extortioner and a thief, and he was deported to Yasoshima, a group of small islands off the coast; he is said to have composed this song and sung it to the fishing-boats, as he was being carried off. He was afterwards pardoned and reinstated, dying in the year 852.

Source: Internet Sacred Text Archive, file shi/hvj/hvj012.htm.

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