In the Tenryaku period, when the Ichijō Regent [Fujiwara no Koretada] was Head Chamberlain, His Majesty lost his belt to him while playing go. The games continued, and Koretada’s losses mounted, so His Majesty composed this poem to ask for the return of his belt.
白浪の打ちやかへすと待つほどに浜の真砂の数ぞ積もれる
siranami no
uti ya kaFesu to
matu Fodo ni
Fama no masago no
kazu zo tumoreru
Wondering when the whitecaps
Will return, and
While waiting
The grains of sand upon the beach
Increase in number!
The Right state: while ‘shadowed’ (kakikurasu) is a normal turn of phrase, we find ‘tears shadowing my sight’ (kurasu namida) to be unsatisfactory. The Left state: we wonder about the appropriateness of using shio no hiru ma alone for a play on words with hiru.
In judgement: The Left’s ‘That the hours had flown so fast I did forget’ (hima yuku koma mo wasurarete) gives the impression that the conception of the poem ought to be of waiting for dusk, but ‘First, the tears shadowing my sight I should suppress’ (kurasu namida o mazu osauran) seems to be something entirely different. As for the Right’s ‘Even when the beach is daytime dry my sleeves are soaked’ (shio no hiru ma mo sode wa nurekeri), I ask you, how can you think daytime isn’t a part of the phrase? The Right must win.