Sunday, September 30, 2012

Shunshoku Umegoyomi Vol. 1:
The Apprentice Girl (part 2)

Yonehachi continues her description of Tanjirou's supposed wife from last time:

Fig. 1: またおかみさん
は。とふして家には
居ないといふし。
"Also, [Arima] said that your wife was passing [the time] not at home (fig. 1)"
I spent quite a bit of time trying to decipher the meaning of 「とふして」 here, but couldn't find anything that made sense. It's clearly distinct from the preceding 「は」, since there's a period. I checked for both verbs and nouns, but there wasn't anything helpful, so I could use some assistance here.

Edit: yellow9031 suggested in the comments that 「とふして」 is the classical kana equivalent of 「とおして」, which would be written with kanji as 「通して」, or "to pass [the time]".

Fig. 2: 聞ばきく
ほどなんだか
おまはんのよふ
な心持で。
"The more I heard, I somehow started getting the feeling that it was you (fig. 2), but no matter how much I heard, it didn't settle things [for me], so I specifically made sure to tell that girl that she was forbidden to speak about this matter to anyone (fig. 3)"
 I wasn't sure what to make of 「モウゝゝ」 ― it didn't fit any modern Japanese patterns, so I assumed it was a redoubling of 「モウ」, for emphasis.

Fig. 3: モウゝゝ
どうも氣が濟ねへ
から其子によくゝゝ
私の聞たことを口
留して。置いて。
Note that 「氣が濟ねへ」 is just a dialectical version of the modern Japanese phrase 「気が済まない」. The kanji here were of course in kyuujitai, and therefore a little difficult to read without prior knowledge of kyuujitai or taking the context into account.

わちき」 is of course a premodern reading of 「わたし」, which we encountered previously. Also note the now-nonstandard writing of 「口止め」 ("forbidding to speak") as 「口留」 ― this isn't particularly surprising, given the relatively similar meanings of 「止める」 and 「留める」 in modern Japanese, but nevertheless made the kanji a bit harder to decipher.

Fig. 4: 今日の朝
参りには。なん
でも尋ねよふと
思つて。
I was a little uncertain about the kanji for 「おいて」. 「置」 is of course the most obvious and logical choice, but I can't see the connection between the printed character and the kuzushiji version in fig. 3.

"This morning, I decided that no matter what, I would come and look into this (fig. 4)."

The main issue I had with fig. 4 was figuring out the kanji from which the kuzushiji form of the furigana 「け」, from 「今日」, comes from. The closest match I could come up with, 「介」. I ran into a similar issue with 「け」 in another post, but the two kuzushiji forms don't appear to be related.

2 comments:

  1. hello, i read all your shunshoku umegoyomi related posts, but this is my first comment.
    first, thanks for your hard work translating this!
    i wanted to give you a hint to fig.1
    i think:
    とふして->とおして->通す->to pass(anything)through, in a sense like: the whole day, through the whole time, or something like that.

    and that also fits with yonehati's worries.
    (sorry my explanation is not that good..)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for the suggestion, I've added it to my post!

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