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for a thousand years may it remain thus,
as in great awe we serve and obey her,
as prostrated we serve and obey her,
and humbly present her with this song.
According to Nihon shoki, this poem was presented to Sovereign Suiko (r. 592-628) in the New Year of 613 by Soga no Umako, the Great Omi of the Court. The Great Omi was a government position occupied by the leader of those clans who held the title of Omi (one of a number of honorary surnames bestowed by the sovereign on the most important clans). The most powerful of these Omi clans were the Soga, which is why Soga no Umako occupied the position. The poem is a fairly straightforward declaration of praise. Umako addresses Sovereign Suiko as "our great lord," describes "looking up" at her as she emerges from her palace, and expresses the wish that her reign last for a thousand years. To be a little more precise, what Umako hopes will last for "myriad" (ten thousand) years is "our" subservience and obedience to the sovereign. Or to put it another way, what he hopes will last forever is the relationship between subject and ruler. This relationship is expressed, as in the poem by Sovereign Jomei which we looked at earlier, with a visual metaphor. The subjects "look up" at their sovereign, and hope to continue "looking up" to her for ten thousand years.
Thus "looking" or "seeing" can imply both "ruling" (as in the Jomei poem) and "submission to rule" (as in this poem by Umako) depending on whether the one doing the "looking" is the ruler or a subject. We can think of "looking" in the sense of "ruling," as a "ruling gaze" (looking down on) and "looking" in the sense of subjection, as a "subjected gaze" (looking up to).
We can also think of these two poems as examples of the voice or the words of the ruler (in the case of the Jomei poem), and the voice or the words of the subject (in the case of the Umako poem). The voice of the ruler is fairly straightforward and easy to understand. Since the ruler is, by definition, a preeminent and unique individual, the ruler's voice is therefore an individual voice that can only belong to the ruler. The voice of the subject, however, is a little more complex. According to Nihon shoki, poem number 2 was presented by Soga no Umako to Sovereign Suiko. So, on one level, the "voice" of this poem can be said to be that of Umako himself. However, since Umako offers the poem in his capacity as "Great Omi" and leader of the Soga clan, the voice of the poem can also be said to represent or "stand for" (both in a figurative and a political sense) all the sovereign's subjects in the Soga clan. In other words, the voice of the poem can also be interpreted as a collective voice. In fact, this poem is followed by a response by Sovereign Suiko, in which she praises not Umako himself but the entire Soga clan for their service to her.
If we look at poem number 2 again, we can see that the text of the poem itself gives no indication that it is by a particular person. In fact, the voice of the poem could represent anyone who was praising the sovereign. This is why it is a good poem of praise. It singles out the one praised as a preeminent individual, while allowing the voice of praise to sound as collective as possible.
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