Sacred Texts Japan Index Previous Next
THE stranger who has travelled far,
The friend with welcome smile,
All sorts of men who come and go
Meet at this mountain stile,--
They meet and rest awhile.
Semi Marti is said to have been the son of the Emperor Uda, who reigned A.D. 888-897. He became blind, and so, being unable to ascend the throne, he retired to a hut on the hills, near to a barrier gate, and amused himself with his guitar. The translation does not fully reproduce the antithesis of the original--'this or that man, people coming and going, long lost friends and strangers'. The last line is literally 'the barrier on the mountain road of meeting'; and Ōsaka no Seki, as the name is now spelled, a small hill on the edge of Lake Biwa, not far from Kyōto, is the site commemorated in this verse.
