Taketori ga yoyo ni nakitsutsu todomekemu kimi wa kimi ni to koyoi shimo yuku

English Translation

The old bamboo man
wept night after night, they say
and tried to keep her
And tonight, tonight of all
nights, she goes to her lord's house

Meaning

The old bamboo-cutter wept night after night, they say, and tried to keep her. And tonight, tonight of all nights, she goes to her lord.

Commentary

77 Tonight of All Nights She Goes

To the same Katsura Princess, Minamoto no Yoshitane composed "Nagaki yo o Akashi no ura ni yaku shio no kemuri wa sora ni tachi ya noboranu". While they were meeting in secret in this way, the princess was invited to the retired emperor's gathering on the night of the full moon; and as she was about to go, Yoshitane, seeing that it would put an end to their meeting, begged her not to go that night at least. But she could not stay away when the retired emperor had summoned her, and she left in haste, whereupon Yoshitane composed "Taketori ga yoyo ni nakitsutsu todomekemu kimi wa kimi ni to koyoi shimo yuku". That is the whole of the section.
The Katsura Princess lived at Katsura, has poems in the twentieth and twenty-sixth sections, and appears in the seventy-sixth. Minamoto no Yoshitane was the man visiting her, who spends a night outside her gate in that section. The retired emperor's residence is the palace of an emperor after his abdication.
The setting is the night of the full moon. The princess had been summoned to the retired emperor's gathering, and Yoshitane begged her not to go that night at least. She could not refuse the summons and left in haste.
What prompted the poem was the failure of that plea.
The section closes with it. Where the previous poem gathered the run of their secret nights, this one belongs to the end of them.

The first word names the old man of the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, and the poem rests on the scene in which he weeps and tries to keep Kaguyahime from returning to the moon on the night of the full moon.
The word in the second line means night after night, and also carries the sound of sobbing, so that the old man's weeping and the succession of nights are held together.
The third line sets the princess and the lord she goes to side by side, using the same word for each. In the tale the emperor sues for the girl, and a princess summoned by a retired emperor is laid over that.
The closing, with an emphatic particle, marks the night out from all others. In the tale the girl ascends to the sky; here she goes to the retired emperor's house. The position of a man who tried to keep her and could not is set over the old man's.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

Other