Ide ya nazo kazu naranu mi ni kanawanu wa
hito ni makeji no kokoro narikeri

English Translation

Why should it be so
that in one who counts for naught
what will not obey
is only this stubborn heart
unwilling to lose to men

Meaning

Why should it be that in one who counts for nothing, the one thing that will not obey is this heart unwilling to lose to anyone.

Commentary

Part Three: Takekawa

　In Chujo no Omoto's room the Lieutenant complained and grieved until she could hardly joke with him and, sorry for him, gave him little answer. He brought up the evening when he had watched the sisters at go, saying in all earnest that he wished he might have even so slight a dream again, and asking what he was to live on now. When she turned on him and said that if her mistress heard of it she would think the worse of him, he answered recklessly that he was a man at the end of things, and that he had been sorry to see the elder sister lose at go: had he been able to signal her the move, it would have been no contest at all. Then he spoke this poem.

　"Kazu" and "make" are both terms belonging to go, and on the face of it he is talking about not wanting to lose a game. Underneath is his refusal to lose to the Retired Emperor. He calls himself a man who counts for nothing and in the same breath says that the one thing he cannot govern is his unwillingness to be beaten, which is his character exactly: he knows his place and cannot give up. The wordplay carried over from the go-watching scene is here made to speak of a defeat in love.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

Ide ya nazo kazu naranu mi ni kanawanu wa hito ni makeji no kokoro narikeri

Ide ya nazo kazu naranu mi ni kanawanu wa
hito ni makeji no kokoro narikeri