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This is a Jiuta piece in the Tegotomono style from the Yamada Ryű school . This piece was composed for koto by Nakanoshima Kengyo . This piece was composed for shamisen by Kitazawa Koto .

History (from Tsuge Gen'ichi)
This jiuta piece was originally composed by Kitazawa Koto, and about a century later arranged by Fukakusa Kengyo (A. 1770).

Sarashi means 'bleaching cloth.' This piece shows the earliest style of the tegoto-mono form of koto music, in which songs are connected with one another by virtuoso instrumental interludes (ai, ainote or tegoto). The song text deals with a scene in which people are bleaching cloth in the Uji River near Kyoto.

Poem (translated by Tsuge Gen'ichi)
At Makinoshima,
Where bleaching linen
Is so lowly a task
Let us go to the Uji River,
Where the whitecaps
On the water are like snow.
Let's take our linen
For bleaching.

The white of the linen
We bleach there
Will be whiter than the frost
That falls
On the magpie bridge (1)!

Hey, ho!
You can see the mountain now!
Look,
The mist on Asahi Mountain!
Is Mount Fuji or Suruga
So much better?
Is Mount Fuji of Suruga
So much better?

On the waves
That wash Kojima
On the waves
That wash Kojima
Send down
Moon light
Send down
Moon light.

Look, look
What a place!
The equal
Of Fushumi
And Takeda,
Of Yodo and Toba!
The equal
Of any scenic spot.

The rolling waves,
The rolling waves...
Tame them
With wicker weirs
And stop
The water's flow,
And stop
The water's flow.

At such a place,
At such a place,
We of Makino Village
Now one by one
Take up our linen
And off we go together
To our humble homes.

(1) According to an ancient Chinese legend, a magpie spreads its wings across the milky way (in Japanese, amanogawa 'River of Heaven') on the Seventh Day of the Seventh Month of each year so that the weaver girl and the shepherd boy may meet.

Sarashi appears on the following albums:

Album	Shakuhachi	Koto	Shamisen
Jiuta to Sokyoku no Sekai - 1  (Listen)
Sokyoku Jiuta Taikei 22  (Listen)		Nakanoshima Kin'ichi
Take-Ikkan  (Listen)	Aoki Reibo II
Yamada Ryu Sokyoku Meikyoku-shu  (Listen)		Nakanoshima Kin'ichi	Shinagawa Masami