Poet-novelist Saisei Muroo (1889-1962) earned fame with two lines of poetry: ``Your native place is what you are to think of from afar/ It is what you are to sing about sadly from afar.''

These lines appear in ``Jojo Shokyoku Shu'' (Short lyrical poems), Muroo's early work.

They express how he felt in his hometown, Kanazawa in Ishikawa Prefecture. He had returned there after failing to realize his dream of becoming a poet in Tokyo.

The following lines strike his sentiment home: ``Hometown is not a place to return to/ Even if I should be reduced/ To begging for food in a strange land.''

I recalled Muroo's poem because the words ``strange land'' and ``home'' were mentioned in a news report about a stone epitaph that had been found in China. The epitaph was for a student who had traveled to China during the Tang Dynasty (618-907) on a Japanese mission.

Based on a Xinhua News Agency report, an expert has translated the concluding part as: ``The body has been buried in a strange land, but the soul will surely find its way home.''

According to the epitaph, the deceased was someone who was sent to the Tang Dynasty together with the famed poet-scholar-administrator Abe no Nakamaro (698-770) and served Emperor Xuanzong's court with distinction, only to die of a sudden illness at the age of 36. Xuanzong gave him a special burial.

If we believe the epitaph, it seems the student lived a dramatic life, at once dazzling and saddening.

Missions to China during the Tang Dynasty were instituted by the court of Empress Suiko (554-628). They were recommended by the monks and students who had been sent to China during the Sui Dynasty (589-618), and had returned home after witnessing the demise of Sui and replacement by Tang, according to ``Saigo-no Kentoshi'' (The last mission to the Tang Dynasty, published by Kodansha).

The returnees referred to the Tang Dynasty as ``Morokoshi-no Kuni'' (Great Tang Empire). They called for regular contacts with that empire, describing it as ``a gem of a country, stable and complete with a well-developed legal system.''

To a man who served with remarkable distinction in the capital of the Tang Dynasty, a center of civilization of not only China but the whole world, the words ``strange land'' and ``home'' should have held meanings different from what they meant to Saisei Muroo.

But these are weighty and painful words in all ages and circumstances when it comes to navigating the tough sea of life.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Oct. 13(IHT/Asahi: October 14,2004) (10/14)