凪のよせてかえるこえ

[Riccardo91]

Dear Japanese forum,

I'm having troubles with a scene in a cartoon where the community people of a shrine are rehearsing a 神楽 for a 祭り. A woman starts singing:

凪のよせてかえるこえ
(A couple of attempts: "A voice coming home brought by the lull", "The voice of the lull approaching home".)

That's all we hear and there's no further context to clarify the meaning. I don't even know if こえ stands for 声 or if it's some verb declination.

Also, this verse was not in the script, so it has been transcribed from the audio. I have an English translation saying "Towards the waves, coming home", so the author probably heard 波 instead of 凪, but I'm pretty sure I'm hearing the ぎ.

I'm completely at a loss, the grammatical construction seems strange to me. Do you have any hints?

Thank you so much!

 

[Flaminius]

A typical theme in the traditional Japanese poetry is the ebb and flow of waves, e.g., 寄せては返す波. The chant in your kagura makes perfect sense if 凪 were 波. There would be no grammatical errors in 波の寄せて返る声.

Since a lull is the absence of waves, a lull going towards and away from the shore is an oxymoron, a rare literary trope to be used in pre-modern Japanese. I tend to wager that 波 was intended by the author.

 

[Riccardo91]

If so, I guess I'm mishearing that part, after all.
If I understand correctly, now the meaning would be "A voice going back and forth with the waves", am I right?

Thank you so much for your explanation!

 

[Flaminius]

Oops, I wasn't aware this poses some difficulty to learners....

波の声 (the modifier is split from the modified in your text) is the sound of waves. The way 声 is used here is retained in fossilised expressions like this, but 声 had more general usage in older Japanese. E.g., 九九の呼び声 (mnemonic phrases of the 9x9 multiplication table).

It is slightly off-topic, but 波の寄せて返る声 is not poetic enough. I am clearly going beyond what your text is about and what you may want to know, but a more apt phrase for a kagura portion was 寄せては返す波の声. The author may have wanted to modify it because it is really a set phrase, but a set phrase has a reason it became a set phrase. My preference here is simply the metics that governs the traditional Japanese poetry. The moraic structure of 寄せては返す波の声 is 7-5, or a seven-mora grammatical constituent followed by a 5-mora constituent. The alternation between seven morae and five morae is the basis of what passes as rhythmical.

 

[Riccardo91]

So it's "The sound of the waves going back and forth", right?

Thank you for the additional explanation, it's really interesting! Personally I think your version is also easier to understand, but maybe I'm just biased as a non-native.

Thank you again!