修行会

117「美しきこの天地の御姿は主の造りし一家なりけり。」- 植芝盛平

Original Wala¹

美しき
この天地の
御姿は
主の造りし
一家なりけり

植芝盛平 (Ueshiba, 1977)

Translation

“The beautiful form of this whole heaven and earth—this august visage—wrought by the Primal Kami into one single household indeed!” – Morihei Ueshiba

Waka Translation

Beautiful the form,
of this whole heaven and earth,
the august visage—

wrought by the Primal Kami;
one single household, indeed!

Morihei Ueshiba

歴史的仮名遣い（語構成を明示）²

麗しき（うるわしき）
此の天地の（このあめつちの）
御姿は（みすがたは）
主の造りし（ぬしのつくりし）
一家なりけり（いっかなりけり）

植芝盛平

Bungo Romanization

uruwashiki
kono ametsuchi no
misugata wa
nushi no tsukurishi
ikka narikeri

Ueshiba Morihei

Notes

¹ Original quote prompts うるわ for 美; remaining classical readings are あめつち for 天地 and ぬし for 主.

² Classical options include 此の for この and 麗 for うるわし (the poem is also transmitted with 美).

Translation, Notes, Commentary, and Research by Latex G. N. R. Space-Coyote

Ueshiba, M. (2025). 植芝盛平道歌–117: A single household wrought (L. G. N. R. Space-Coyote, Trans.; OpenAI ChatGPT-5 Pro, Ed.). Shugyokai.org. (Original work published 1977) https://shugyokai.org/ss4l

美（うるわ; uruwa）— beauty; beautiful.

美しき（うるわしき; urawashiki）— in this dōka the head noun it modifies—御姿（みすがた） of この天地—is cosmic and sacral. The decorous, orderly, august color of うるわしい better matches that register than the intimate “cute / dear” undertone that うつくし often carries in classical usage; うるわしき is a 連体形 that runs on to modify the head noun 御姿 two lines later—an enjambed pre‑nominal typical of waka lineation, thus resulting in an august, well‑ordered beauty of the cosmos.

天（あめ; ame）— heaven (space); kakekotoba as 雨 (rain); Heian readers routinely exploited the homophone あめ to let “rain” ghost the sky—a stock move in waka imagery (e.g., rain nourishing the earth whose “august form” we’re contemplating). Discussions of 天／雨 as a standard pun surface across commentaries and teaching materials; see the scholarship that lists 天（あめ）—雨 as a textbook pair (谷, 2012; site primers on枕詞 show the same phonic field around ひさかたの → 天／雨; cf. Brower & Miner, 1961; Tani, 2012).

地（つち; tsuchi）— earth (solidity).

天地（あめつち; ametsuchi）— “heaven and earth; the cosmos”; evokes the total cosmos in Shinto and broader East Asian cosmology, with humans situated as mediators within it.

御（み; mi） — honorific prefix; in historical grammar it functions as a bound morpheme marking reverence toward the referent. NINJAL’s (2017) historical corpus treats ミ（御） as a prefixal element with numerous sacred exemplars (御子, 御言, 御手洗, etc.); indexes sacred dignity. In Shintō vocabulary mi‑ marks kami and imperial referents (mi‑koto, mi‑tama), a usage by Shimazu’s (n.d.) Encyclopedia of Shintō treats as an honorific title/prefix for divine persons and attributes. Reading 御姿 as みすがた thus harmonizes with Ueshiba’s Shintō / Ōmoto‑inflected diction, where the cosmos itself is treated as theophany. Kakekotoba as 身 “body, self” allowing 御姿 to be heard as “august figure / appearance” and “the body‑form (身姿) of the cosmos”. Macrocosm as both revered visage and living body—a classic Heian trick of compressing metaphysics into morphology.

姿（すがた; sugata） — noun “appearance, figure, form.” In religious registers can shade toward “august form/visage” (Kanji Jitenon Online, n.d.).

御姿（みすがた; misugata）— “august form”; the honorific mi- marks sacred dignity; sacralizes the visible order (religious register); rendering it as “august” mirrors classical translations of divine epithets in Shinto contexts; employs 御（み） as an honorific prefix marking sacred dignity—apt in Shintō diction. Rendering it “august form” conveys this nuance. In broader religious usage 御姿 can mean the revered “image/form” of a buddha or kami (e.g., pilgrimage gosugata prints), reinforcing the aura of sacral display in “the form of this heaven and earth” (Shikoku Hachijūhakkasho Reijōkai, n.d.).

この天地の御姿（このあめつちのみすがた; kono ametsuchi no misugata）—“the august appearance of this cosmos”.

は（わ; wa） — topic / contrastive particle, setting この天地の御姿 “the august form of this heaven‑and‑earth” as the discourse topic to be predicated of in the shimo‑no‑ku. Unlike the emphatic kakari‑joshi (ぞ・なむ・や・か・こそ), は does not trigger kakarimusubi (cf. Shirane, 2005). 

主（ぬし; nushi）— “primal kami”; rather than “lord” (which can suggest Christian resonance), “primal kami” signals the creative source (Ōkami, Ame-no-Mioya, etc.) often invoked by Ueshiba when speaking of the divine origin / order. su is read in Go-on readings that were used in Japanese Buddhist and legal communities of practice based in Nanjing dialect which are readings for Chinese characters used in the Kojiki; as su, attached to names for respect; etymology is important here, wood with fire on top; a spirit tablet in old pictograms, which incidentally is the radical on the left of the kanji for kami; fire is considered sacred, and the person (e.g., master, head of household, elder) who controlled fire was called so (そう; DigitalIO, n.d.-c; EDRDG, n.d.; Muller, 2014; Wikimedia Foundation, 2025). “主” often functions like a monotheistic Lord who underlies and manifests through the kami; this maps smoothly onto the line 主の造りし (“fashioned by the Lord”; cf. Breen & Teeuwen, 2010; Nelson, 1996; Ōmoto, n.d.). See LAB NOTES.

造りし (つくりし; tsukurishi) — is verb + past auxiliary き (連体形 し), classical relative past “that [the Lord] made”; 造りし is the 連体形 (attributive) of the classical past auxiliary き (“…した”), i.e., “(the X) that [someone] made.” 

一家（いっか; ikka）— “one household / a single household / a single family”; ikka points to the world-as-family motif; it also nods to the classical paradigm in Japanese cultural history—imagining cosmos, community, and practice as one kinship whole (i.e., household); key to the ethical vision of the cosmos as one family under the Lord; universalist, pan-harmonic reading aligns with Ōmoto’s “all from the same Source” teaching that influenced Ueshiba’s spirituality.

なりけり（narikeri）— classical exclamatory close (“indeed / truly so”) is conveyed by the tanka’s declarative cadence (“now” + terminal stress); (copula なり+ exclamatory perfect けり) adds rhetorical discovery / realization at closure (a classical “cutting” ending often used in waka to produce resonance) functioning like a kire at the poem’s end—“is (indeed)” / “has (ever) been”. Kakekotoba (a) 断定の助動詞 なり (“is, indeed”) + けり (exclamative/dubitative past), vs. (b) 動詞 成る (“become”) + けり (“has come to be, indeed”). Classical grammar handbooks and primers treat the form / meaning split; poets often let both readings hover to create a realizational close (kire), especially with けり (cf. Shirane, 2005). Effect in 117: The cosmos is one household—and has come to be (成り) one household. That slight semantic drift amplifies the poem’s cosmogony.

Kami-no-ku and shimo-no-ku. The poem’s turn (the shift from kami‑no‑ku to shimo‑no‑ku) moves from praise of the cosmos’ beauty to a doctrinal assertion: the whole cosmos is one household under the Creator. That rhetorical “pivot” is textbook tanka technique.

Kakekatoba (掛詞). The pivot word seems to be 主 (ぬし) as it relates to kami creators (Parents) of heaven and earth in kami-no-ku, head of household in shimo-no-ku, and its polysemneity (the quality of being polysemous) allows for additional meanings (see LAB NOTES).

Graphically ambiguous form. 美しき can also be read うつくしき (‘beautiful’), because both うるわし and うつくしare classical adjectives and both take the 連体形 -しき. Dictionaries note that うるわしい may be written either 麗しいor, less commonly, 美しい, while うつくしい is the standard graph for the modern “beautiful”.

Classical inflection. うるわし (シク活用) → 連体形 しき; verb つくる (四段) + 過去 き (連体 し); copula なり + けり 終止—an archetypal bungo cadence.

Lexical register: 天地＝あめつち is a classical/kanshi‑inflected reading that appears in pre‑modern literature (vs. modern on‑yomi tenchi). This aligns the poem with waka diction.

Honorific morphology. 御 (mi-) in 御姿 is a pre‑modern honorific prefix common in religious / liturgical registers, reflected in exegetical notes on Ueshiba’s dōka.

Meter. Counting いっか as い (1)・っ (1)・か (1) follows mora‑based metrics; the sokuon っ constitutes one mora, preserving the 7‑mora close.

Ueshiba’s religious horizon. Ueshiba’s Aikidō grew within Ōmoto / neo‑Shintō currents (Deguchi Onisaburō), where the cosmos is a theophany and humanity is envisioned as one family under the kami. This cosmological ethics of harmony (wa) pervades Ueshiba’s dōka.

Shintō cosmology. Standard histories of Shintō present the heaven–earth polarity and creation myths as a matrix for later ethical imaginaries; the line “一家” (one household) reads as a moral‑cosmological claim of universal kinship.

Yoin (余韻). Ending on “—so.” after “single family” leaves an after‑tone that invites doctrinal reflection (cosmos as kin), a classical strategy of resonance in waka aesthetics (cf. Miner et al., 1985).

LAB NOTES

Curious note. 主 demonstrates kakekotoba. Matsuoka (1929) – nushi is contraction of no (の) and ushi (p. 980). 主 puns 経津主神, a 軍神, kami of swords and lightning, general of 天照大, of 香取神宮. Nushi can be massive legendary animal long living guardian spirits, a yōkai. Edo period yamabiko 山彦 are yōkai, though not massive (Foster, 2015). Sudahide’s (1830) and Kuniteru’s (1847) prints of Oniwakamaru fighting the giant carp at Bishamon Falls is a nushi. (Lyon Collection, 2020). On kotodama, す (su), from 寸 (etymology: unit of measure, distance between the wrist and pulse place of radial artery; Muller, 2001; Wikimedia, 2025-b) and 須 (etymology: head with hair on side; meanings: wait for, require, mandatory, necessary, moment, short while; Wikimedia, 2025-c), foregrounds as ス of サムハラ; [REDACTED]. 須 is used to transliterate सु in Buddhist terms, meaning well, good, auspicious, must, should, expect, wait, a moment, instant, split second (Muller, 2021; Wikimedia Foundation, 2025-c; Wisdom Library, n.d.).