Sent to a lady with whom he had once been intimate, after some years had passed.
いにしへのしづのをだまき繰りかへし昔を今になすよしもがな
| inishie no shizu no odamaki kurikaeshi mukashi o ima ni nasu yoshi mogana | In times long gone Thread upon a bobbin was Wound back— Just so, the present into the past I wish we could make! |
65
It seems, though, that the lady thought nothing of it.
In days long past, when a man was passing a certain lady’s apartments at the palace, the lady, seeming to bear him some ill will, called out, ‘Go on, then, you creeper and see what becomes of you!’[1] The man replied:
罪もなき人をうけへば忘れ草おのが上にぞ生ふといふなる
| tsumi mo naki hito o uke’eba wasuregusa ono ga ue ni zo ou to iu naru | When a sinless Man you curse, Forgotten, among the day-lillies Upon you Growing, will you be, they say! |
64
Some among the women were very vexed by that.
[1] Sanjōnishi Sanetaka (1455-1537) identifies this as part of a poem from Shoku man’yōshū:
忘れゆくつらさはいかにいのちあらばよしや草葉よならむさがみむ
| wasureyuku tsurasa wa ika ni inochi araba yoshi ya kusaba naramu saga mimu | To gradually forget Your cruelty, somehow Had I but life left, Go on, then, you creeper, and See what becomes of you! |
Shoku man’yōshū is no longer extant, and so the accuracy of this cannot be determined (Horiuchi and Akiyama 1997, 111).
Kusaba (‘blade of grass’), which I have translated as ‘creeper’, was a slang term used to refer to an unfaithful man.
Written by a woman and sent to a man whom she had promised to marry, after her family have disagreed and taken her away:
秋かけていひしながらもあらなくに木の葉降りしくえにこそありけれ
| aki kakete iFisinagara mo aranakuni ko no Fa Furisiku e ni koso arikere |
‘When autumn comes’ I said, And yet, ‘tis not to be; Fallen leaves swept along The inlet, indeed! |
In reply:
野とならばうづらとなりて鳴きをらんかりにだにやはきみは來ざらむ
| no to naraba udura to narite nakiworan kari ni dani ya Fa kimi Fa kozaramu |
If I’m abandoned in a field A quail I shall become And cry; But surely, briefly hunting me You’ll come, won’t you? |
Anonymous
See also KKS VIII 971-2 for a variant on the exchange.
Once, long ago there was a man. He abducted someone’s daughter and when they reached Musashi Plain, as he was plainly a kidnapper, he would have been seized by the provincial governor’s men. Leaving the woman in the grasses, he fled. The pursuers, saying to themselves that doubtless the abductor was hiding there, set the plain alight. The woman, panicked, cried out:
武蔵野は今日はな燒きそ若草のつまもこもれり我もこもれり
| musasino Fa keFu Fa na yaki so wakakusa no tuma mo komoreri ware mo komoreri |
O, Musashi Plain Burn not this day! Fresh grass, My man is hidden there, As, too, am I… |
Hearing this, they found her and, together with the man who had been found elsewhere, took her back with them.