淡路島

かよふ千鳥の

鳴く声に

幾夜ねざめぬ

須磨の関守

みなもとのかねまさ

あわじしま

かようちどりの

なくこえに

いくよねざめぬ

すまのせきもり

Minamoto no Kanemasa

Flying back and forth

From Awaji Isle

The plovers with their song

Have many nights kept awake

The guards at Suma Gate.

Hokusai

Minamoto no Kanemasa (? - 1112?). Not much is known about him; he was a contemporary of emperor Horikawa. Only seven poems of him are extant.

This poem is a bit cryptic. Does Kanemasa’s poem refer to the following poem in Murasaki Shikibu’s Genji Monogatari (Suma)?

          Tomo chidori

          morogoe ni naku

          akatsuki wa

          hitori nezame no

          toko mo tanomoshi

Kochidori, little ringed plover in winter

Cries of plovers

in the dawn

bring comfort

to one who awakens

in a lonely bed.

In this chapter Genji, after his disgrace at court, decides to go on a self-imposed exile to Suma, where still sleepless at dawn he hears the plovers and recites the above poem. Suma was an almost deserted place then.

In the Heike Monogatari we read the words said by the Imperial Lady: “But I could not help feeling miserable early in the Juei autumn, when my clansmen ... journeyed along the coast from Suma to Akashi... In the daytime, my sleeves were drenched as we cleaved the boundless waves; at night, I cried until dawn with the plovers on the long sandpits.”

The plover in Japanese poetry is closely associated with winter, and it is a waterside bird. Awaji is a desolate place, a common destination for political exiles. So there would have been a guarded gate on the mainland north of the island to prevent exiles from crossing over and entering the civilised world at Kobe. The birds would be the only creatures having free movement in and out of the island.

Sekimori-cho and Suma Ward are part of Kobe now. There is also a ‘vociferous’ (charadrius vociferous) and a ‘piping’ plover (charadrius melodus). I wonder whether with kayou-chidori is not meant one of these species, kayou also means ‘song, ballad’.

Peter Morse in Hokusai - One Hundred Poets says that the drawing is showing the brewing of sake, making a pun of suma no sekimori (gatekeepers of Suma) and reading it as suma no sakemori (the keepers of sake of Suma), Suma and surroundings (east Kobe) being a place where fine sake is produced, certainly in Hokusai’s time. In the distance we see a flock of plovers. The Japanese expression chidori-ashi, 'plover's feet', signifies an inability to walk straight when drunk. So Hokusai was definitely having his fun with this drawing.