Though I hid it, still
my love has come out into
my face, so that now
people ask me whether I
am brooding over something
- Meaning
-
Though I kept it hidden, my love has shown in my face—so plainly that people ask whether something is troubling me.
- Commentary
-
Volume Six: Aoi-no-mae
Emperor Takakura came to love a girl called Aoi-no-mae, a servant to one of the empress's ladies. Her birth was low. The regent Motofusa told him that if it was her low birth that troubled him there was no need to worry: he would shortly adopt her as his own daughter.
The emperor answered that he was grateful for the thought, but that if this were after his abdication such a thing might be allowed, whereas to do it while he reigned would draw reproach for generations; he did not wish to injure the dignity of a reign for a private matter. Motofusa, who knew that the emperor never reversed a decision once made, withdrew without pressing further.
Still the ache in him only grew, and one day he copied out an old love poem on fine thin paper and had the Reizei Lesser Captain Takafusa carry it to her. This is that poem.
Aoi-no-mae looked at the writing, which was beautiful, put the paper into her robe, flushed, said she felt unwell, and went home to her family. She took to her bed and within five or six days she was dead. For a single day of a sovereign's favor, a woman loses a hundred years of her life—that, the tale says, is what such a thing means. People remarked that his conduct was exactly of a piece with that of Emperor Taizong of Tang, who gave up taking a girl into his palace when Wei Zheng remonstrated with him.
The poem is by Taira no Kanemori, included in the Shūishū and known as number forty of the Hundred Poets. At the palace poetry contest of the Tentoku era it was matched against Mibu no Tadami's poem and won.
What the poem does in the story turns on one fact: the emperor did not use words of his own. Barred by his position from taking a woman of low birth, he could only entrust his feeling to an old poem. The very act of borrowing a ready-made verse is the expression of his constraint.
Aoi-no-mae sends no reply. She is not in a position to. A poem is given, no answer comes, and the one who received it dies. It is one of the few places in the Tale of the Heike where a poem kills.
The text states plainly that this is an old love poem, quoted by a character rather than composed by one.
shinoduredo……though I concealed it.
iro ni izu……to show in one's face or bearing.
mono ya omou……is something on your mind?
usuyō……fine thin paper.
tori no ko gami……a high-grade paper made from gampi bark.
mizuguki no ato……the traces of the brush; handwriting.
Taira no Kanemori……a mid-Heian poet, one of the Thirty-Six Immortals.
Reizei no Shōshō Takafusa……Fujiwara no Takafusa, who also appears in Volume Four.
Kanpaku Motofusa……Fujiwara no Motofusa, the regent.
- Source
-
Heike Monogatari
- Other
-