Katakake no fune ni ya noreru shiranami no sawagu toki nomi omoiizuru kimi

English Translation

Do you ride a boat
rigged with but a single sail
You remember me
only when the white breakers
rise and clamour around you

Meaning

Are you sailing in a boat with only one sail rigged? You remember me only when the white waves rise and start to break around you.

Commentary

3 A Thousand Colours

When the late Major Counsellor Minamoto still held the rank of Consultant, the Kyōgoku Lady of the Bedchamber, who was to preside over a celebration for the Teiji retired emperor, sent word to him that she meant to hold such an occasion and asked him to have a branch or two of offerings made up. He had a great number of open-work bamboo baskets made and gave them to Toshiko to dye in various colours. The woven mats too, and all the dyeing, twisting and plaiting, he left entirely in her hands. Everything was finished in haste by the end of the ninth month. Then, on the first day of the tenth month, Toshiko sent "Chiji no iro ni isogishi aki wa suginikeri ima wa shigure ni nani o somemashi" to the man who had kept her working at such speed. While the work was being rushed through, messages had passed between them without a break; afterwards, the business being done, nothing came, and when the end of the twelfth month arrived she sent "Katakake no fune ni ya noreru shiranami no sawagu toki nomi omoiizuru kimi". That too went unanswered, and the year turned. Around the second month he broke off a willow branch from his grounds, one unusually long and supple, and sent it with "Aoyagi no ito uchihaete nodokanaru haruhi shimo koso omoiidekere". Toshiko praised it beyond measure and went on telling the story for years afterwards.
The late Major Counsellor Minamoto is Minamoto no Kiyokage, a son of Emperor Yōzei, who served as Consultant before rising to Major Counsellor; the title used in this section is the Chinese-style name for that earlier post. The Kyōgoku Lady of the Bedchamber was a daughter of the Minister of the Left, Fujiwara no Tokihira, and became a consort of Emperor Uda. Toshiko was the wife of Fujiwara no Chikane, a third-rank officer of the Right Horse Bureau and a son of Fujiwara no Tadafusa. She appears repeatedly in this book as a poet.
The setting is the end of the twelfth month, with the year almost out. Some two months have passed since the goods were delivered.
What prompted the poem was that the messages, so frequent while the work was in hand, had ceased altogether once it was handed over. This is the second poem she sent, unprompted, from her side.
It too went unanswered, and the year turned. His reply, "Aoyagi no ito uchihaete nodokanaru haruhi shimo koso omoiidekere", came only in the second month, attached to a willow branch.

A boat rigged with a single sail is an unsteady, unreliable thing, and she makes his habit of remembering people only when he needs them into a man sailing in such a boat.
The question in the second line asks whether he is not in fact in such a boat. By stopping short of an assertion she gives the line its edge.
The white waves rising and breaking are the times when help is wanted, and the particle of limitation says that at no other time does he remember. Those waves are the busy weeks of preparation.
The poem ends on the word for him, left standing without a verb, so that the naming is the last thing said. It is a reproach that uses no word of accusation at all; the whole of it is carried by the image of the boat. The section is built as two poems from Toshiko and one reply, and this is the middle one.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

Other