Yamazato ni kayou kokoro mo taenubeshi yuku mo tomaru mo kokorobososa ni

English Translation

Even the heart that
travels to that hill village
will surely give out
for the one who goes and the
one who stays are both afraid

Meaning

Even the heart that travels to that hill village will surely give out. The one who goes and the one who stays are both alone with their fear.

Commentary

87 As the Snow Falls

A man who had held a post in the Arsenal and had gone out to Tajima left the woman he had taken as his wife there and went up to the capital; and when the snow came she sent him "Yamazato ni ware o todomete wakareji no yuki no manimani fukaku naruramu". His reply was "Yamazato ni kayou kokoro mo taenubeshi yuku mo tomaru mo kokorobososa ni". That is the whole of the section.
The post was a third-rank one in the Arsenal, the office responsible for weapons. Tajima lies in the north of what is now Hyōgo prefecture. The same man appears in the eighty-eighth section. Of the woman the prose says only that he had taken her as his wife there.
The setting is the capital, where her poem reached him.
What prompted it is hers, "Yamazato ni ware o todomete wakareji no yuki no manimani fukaku naruramu", with its lament about the deepening snow.
This reply closes the eighty-seventh section. The prose passes no judgement; the section consists of the exchange alone.

The opening speaks of a heart that travels to the hill village: his body is in the capital, and his heart makes the journey.
What follows is that it will surely give out, in the grammar of confident expectation. Where her poem spoke of a road being buried, his speaks of the road the heart takes closing too.
The third line sets the two of them side by side: the one who goes and the one who stays.
The closing gives the reason and stops there. He does not contradict her lament but says that he feels the same, and the poem ends without offering any comfort.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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