Shinozuka no umaya umaya to machiwabishi kimi wa munashiku nari zo shinikeru

English Translation

Station, station, at
Shinozuka — and station
by station I watched
and waited for you, who had
already come to nothing

Meaning

Station, station at Shinozuka — and station by station I waited and waited for you, who had already come to nothing.

Commentary

70 Station After Station

When the Lady of the Palace Guards sent arbutus fruit to Tadafumi, who had gone down east, she worked the name of the fruit into the poem "Michinoku no Adachi no yama mo morotomo ni koeba wakare no kanashikaraji o". She was living in the house by the embankment, and when she caught sweetfish and sent them she composed "Kamogawa no se ni fusu ayu no io torite nede koso akase yume ni mietsu ya". After the man had gone down to Michinoku he sent several affectionate letters by messenger; then word came that he had fallen ill on the road and died, and she was overcome with grief. After she had heard this, a letter of his, written with great feeling, was brought to her by a messenger from the post station at Shinozuka. She was much distressed and asked when it had been written; the messenger said it had been a long while in coming. She then composed "Shinozuka no umaya umaya to machiwabishi kimi wa munashiku nari zo shinikeru", and wept. The man who had died had been admitted to court service as a boy, under the childhood name Daishichi; on coming of age he served in the chamberlains' office, and had gone to Michinoku in his father's train, with the additional charge of conveying gold to the capital. That is the whole of the section.
Fujiwara no Tadafumi had gone down to Michinoku as commander of the expedition and appears in the sixty-ninth section. The man attached to the Lady of the Palace Guards was his son, who composes the poem about the hunting robe there. She appears repeatedly in this book; the tenth section tells how she sold the house by the embankment and moved to Awata. Shinozuka was a post station on the road east.
The setting is after the news of his death. It was then that a letter of his, written with great feeling, was brought from the post station at Shinozuka.
What prompted the poem was that letter. When she asked when it had been written, the messenger said it had been long in coming: a letter from a man she had already been told was dead.
She composed the poem and wept. The section then closes by telling us that the dead man had been admitted to court as a boy under the name Daishichi, had served in the chamberlains' office after coming of age, and had gone to Michinoku in his father's train with the charge of conveying gold to the capital.

Shinozuka was a post station on the road east, and the place where the letter was entrusted is taken straight into the poem.
The repeated word for the station carries, in its sound, the note of watching and waiting — now, now. Doubling the place name puts the length of the waiting into the sound itself.
The verb in the fourth line means to be worn out with waiting: the days of watching for a letter.
The closing phrase is the polite way of saying that a man has died. The one she was waiting for was already gone. The letter that came was written by a living man, and the whole of the waiting turns out to have been for nothing. The story of two people who began by exchanging parting gifts ends here.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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