修行会

161「世の中を眺めては泣きふがいなさ神の怒りに我は勇みつ。」- 植芝盛平

Original Waka

世の中を
眺めては泣き
ふがいなさ
神の怒りに
我は勇みつ

植芝盛平 (Ueshiba, 1977)

Translation

“Looking on the world, again, gazing and weeping—powerless, yet, facing kamis’ anger, taking heart, I’m emboldened.” – Morihei Ueshiba

Waka Translation

Looking on the world,
again, gazing and weeping—
powerless, helpless—

Kami’s divine wrath now faced,
I stand firmly emboldened.

Morihei Ueshiba

歴史的仮名遣い（語構成を明示）

世の中を (よのなかを)
眺めては泣き(ながめてはなき)
不甲斐なさ (ふがいなさ)
神の怒りに (かみのいかりに)
我は勇みつ (われはいさみつ)

植芝盛平

Bungo Romanization

yo no naka wo
nagame tewa naki
fugainasa
kami no ikari ni
ware wa isami tsu

Ueshiba Morihei

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

Ueshiba, M. (2025). 植芝盛平道歌–161: Roused by kamis’ wrath (L. G. N. R. Space-Coyote, Trans.; OpenAI ChatGPT-5 Pro, Ed.). Shugyokai.org. https://shugyokai.org/sww9 (Original work published 1977)

世（よ; yo）— generation, many spanning generations, era, period, time, epoch, dynasty, regime, year, age, world, earth, people (atemporal) (three leaves on a branch).

世の中を（よのなかを; yo‑no‑naka wo）— “the world / human world (accusative)”—direct object of 眺む ‘to gaze upon’; nagamu is the classical base of modern 眺める; in classical and medieval texts, 世の中 often means not just the physical world, but the social‑moral world of human relations and politics, frequently coloured by Buddhist awareness of impermanence and corruption (世の中はかなく…; cf. Stoneman, 2005; Stirek, 2017).

ては（ては; -te-wa）— marks repetition / habitual sequence; in classical handbooks as a conjunctive pattern (te‑wa) with iterative / habitual force.

眺めては（ながめては; nagame‑te‑wa）— ren’yō + ては gives an iterative / habitual sense: “whenever I gaze, (I end up…)”. Classical grammars treat ～ては as a pattern marking repeated sequences (“do X and then (again) Y”); kakekotoba of 眺め as (a) 眺め “long gaze / brooding look”, and (b) 長雨 “long rain”. Ono no Komachi’s extremely famous poem (Hyakunin Isshu 9) exploits this nagame ≈ “gazing” / “long rain” ambiguity, a textbook example in both scholarship and popular explanations of kakekotoba.

泣き（なき; naki）— literally “(I) weep”; ending a phrase on ren’yōkei (泣き) instead of 終止形 (泣く) is a classical “ren’yō‑stop” giving a softer, more open cadence—already a hint of yoin (lingering resonance).

眺めては泣き（ながめてはなき; nagame‑te‑wa naki）— 眺めては: ren’yō + ては (-te‑wa) signals a iterative / repeated habitual sequence sense as “[whenever] [I] gaze [I end up], and [then] weep [again]”.

不甲斐なさ（ふがいなさ; fugainasa）— noun ‘helplessness / feebleness / worthlessness’, from adjective 不甲斐ない; the ‑さ suffix nominalizes adjectives; major dictionaries gloss it as “pathetically lacking in guts; completely spineless; utterly inadequate”; In context, it can point to: (a) the speaker’s own powerlessness before the state of the world, and (b) more generally, the failure of human beings (including himself) to live up to divine expectations (DIGITALIO, n.d.; Nakamura, 2021). Standing alone mid‑poem, it works almost like an exclamation: “(what) helplessness!”—functionally a mid‑poem cut.

神（かみ; kami）— divine; divinity; god(s).

怒り（いかり; ikari）— anger; wrath; fierce emotion; in Shintō, can indicate corrective or purifying force, not just rage.

神の怒りに（かみのいかりに; kami‑no ikari‑ni）— “at / in the face of the gods’ wrath,” with に marking situation / stimulus / circumstance / target under which the next verb holds; the semantic field aligns with Shintō notions of kami whose favor or wrath affects human affairs. In Shinto thought, kami are ambivalent: they nurture when respected but can cause calamity when offended; their wrath (怒り, often conceptualised as 祟り tatari) is a traditional explanation for plagues and disasters. 

我（われ; ware）— me, my, we, us, our, stubbornly hold to one’s opinion, to kill, tilted.

我は（われは; ware wa）— “as for me,” explicitly contrasting the speaker with “the world” of line 1.

勇み（いさみ; isami）—“to be stirred to courage, to brace oneself, to rouse one’s spirit”.

つ（tsu）— auxiliary つ “has (now) become, has resolved”, a hallmark of classical perfective aspect that attaches to the ren’yōkei marking completed, certain action (Shirane, 2005); Ueshiba’s line closes on this perfective, a cadence common in waka diction.

勇みつ（いさみつ; isami‑tsu）— isami‑tsu; verb 勇む (isamu, yodan) + classical perfective auxiliary つ attached to the ren’yōkei (isami).

我は勇みつ（われはいさみつ; ware‑wa isami‑tsu）— “as for me, I (have) steeled / roused myself”, “I have roused myself”, “I am now firmly emboldened”; つ is the classical perfective auxiliary marking completion / resolution; it follows the ren’yōkei (continuative) of the main verb.  The perfective + final position gives a crisp, emphatic close that works very much like a kireji-like ending in waka practice.

Notes on translation. The diction aims to keep Ueshiba’s movement from lament (fugainasa) to moral resolve under the spur of divine wrath. (On mora‑vs‑syllable compromises in English verse, see prosodic discussions in Japanese metrics.)

Notes on orthography. 「不甲斐なさ」 is the standard kanji for ふがいなさ ‘helplessness, feebleness’; dictionaries also record the older variant 「腑甲斐ない」.

Lexis and nominalization. The clipped, exclamative mid‑line 不甲斐なさ (noun via ‑さ) works like an interjected nominal, a device often exploited in waka for emotional “pivoting.” (On ‑さ as adjectival nominalizer, see grammar studies.)

Kami‑no‑ku / shimo‑no‑ku. Lament (世の中…泣き／不甲斐なさ) rises to a decisive turn (神の怒りに／我は勇みつ). The emotional “lift” from despair to resolve—signaled by perfective つ—mirrors classical waka’s preference for a volta in the shimo‑no‑ku. (Auxiliary つ and conjunctive te‑wa are treated in standard bungo grammars.)

Semantic field: Kami and their 怒り resonate with premodern religious sensibilities in which divine displeasure (tatari) motivates purification and right action; framing 怒り as a spur to 勇む matches that idiom.

Shintō, kami, and wrath. In Shintō studies, kami are ambivalent powers whose blessing or wrath shapes human fortunes; accounts of ritual pacification and divine anger form part of the tradition’s historical imagination. Reading 神の怒り as a moral prod accords with this scholarship. 

Modern religious studies of aikidō. Recent work situates Ueshiba’s teaching between prewar religio‑political currents and postwar transnational receptions of ki and “peace.” The poem’s move from lament to resolve under 神の怒り aligns with portrayals of aikidō as spiritual discipline rather than combat sport.

Other sources. This dōka is replicated exactly in 武産合気 (Takahashi, 1986, p. 41).

Yoin; 余韻. Japanese aesthetic discussions describe yoin (余韻) as the “after‑sound” or lingering echo of a poem—the unsaid that continues to vibrate after the last word. Ending in ren’yōkei (泣き) mid‑poem and a solitary abstract noun (不甲斐なさ) invite the reader to fill in reasons for weeping and helplessness. 神の怒り is never specified—no particular calamity or doctrine is named—so the “wrath of kami” hangs as a suggestive, open symbol. 勇みつ implies an entire future of disciplined action (what will this courage do?) without spelling it out.