If you long for him,
come and see him where he is—
this shadow that clings
so close upon my body,
how could I ever let go
- Meaning
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If you long for him, come and see him here. This shadow that clings so close to my own body—how could I ever let it go?
- Commentary
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Volume Four: Kiō
Minamoto no Nakatsuna, Governor of Izu and heir of the lay monk Yorimasa of the Third Rank, owned a horse famous throughout the capital: a bay, unmatched under saddle, in speed, and in temper, called Konoshita, "Under the Trees."
The former Major Captain of the Right, Munemori, sent word that he would like to be given this famous horse and see it. Nakatsuna replied that he had owned such a horse but had lately ridden it too hard and had sent it to the country to rest. Munemori let the matter drop—until the Taira retainers sitting about him put in that the horse had been there the day before yesterday, and yesterday too, and had been ridden in the yard that very morning. Then he is holding on to it, said Munemori; how vexing; ask for it. He sent retainers and letters, five and six and seven and eight times in a single day.
Hearing of it, Yorimasa told his son: even were it a horse of moulded gold, is a thing to be withheld when a man asks for it like that? Send the horse to Rokuhara at once. Nakatsuna could do nothing but obey, and sent it with a poem written out and attached.
Munemori, on receiving the horse, changed its name from Konoshita to Nakatsuna and had the name branded on it. Whenever guests came he would call for Nakatsuna to be saddled and led out, for Nakatsuna to be struck and made to run. Word of it reached Nakatsuna, who said it was unbearable that the horse he loved as his own life should be taken by force and he himself made a laughingstock of the realm. The tale presents this as the direct spark of the rising of Yorimasa and his son, and comments that a man who, because he stands high in the world, says what should not be said and does what should not be done, ought to think very carefully indeed.
Kage is the horse's form and also a shadow, the thing that stays beside a body and cannot be sent away. Come and see him if you long for him: a refusal to give the horse up, wrapped in the vocabulary of love.
On its surface it is an elegant refusal, but in fact the horse went, with this poem attached. What remained as resistance was the poem alone. And where the poem arrived, the horse was renamed Nakatsuna and branded. To the man who answered with a verse, the answer came back as the theft of his name.
Poems in the Tale of the Heike often move events; Yasuyori's stupa in Volume Two is the clear case. This one is set as the opposite: it did not move the situation but worsened it. Sending a poem to a man who could not read one is where the ruin of a house begins.
koishikuba……if you long for him.
kite mo miyo kashi……come and see for yourself.
mi ni souru……clinging close to the body.
kage……a form; a shadow.
hanachiyaru……to let go, to send away.
Konoshita……the horse's name, meaning "under the trees."
kage (coat)……a reddish-brown horse; a bay.
ichimotsu……an outstanding specimen.
Rokuhara……the district where the Taira mansions stood.
yakiin……a brand burned into livestock to mark ownership.
- Source
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Heike Monogatari
- Other
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