Yuyushi tote imu tomo ima wa kai mo araji uki o ba kore ni omoiyoseten

English Translation

Ill-omened, they say
and shun it — but now there is
no use in that: let
me send with this the bitter
things that have been left to me

Meaning

They call it ill-omened and shun it — but there is no use in that now. Let me send with this the bitterness that is left to me.

Commentary

91 Ill-Omened, They Say

When the Minister of the Right of Sanjō was still a Captain, he was appointed imperial messenger for the Kamo festival, and on setting out he sent word to a woman he had once visited but had lately neglected: that he was going on such an errand, that he needed a fan and had been too busy to remember it, and that he would be glad if she would send him one. Thinking that a woman of her tact would send something good, he waited; and she sent a fan of very fine colour and sweet scent, but on the reverse, near the edge, was written "Yuyushi tote imu tomo ima wa kai mo araji uki o ba kore ni omoiyoseten". Reading it he was moved, and his reply was "Yuyushi tote imikeru mono o waga tame ni nashi to iwanu wa ta ga tsuraki nari". That is the whole of the section.
The Minister of the Right of Sanjō is Fujiwara no Sadakata, named for his residence at Sanjō, who appears in the twenty-ninth and seventy-first sections; the Fujiwara no Asatada of the sixth section was his son. A Captain was second officer in the Palace Guards. The Kamo festival was the festival of that shrine, to which an imperial messenger was sent. Of the woman the prose says only that he had once visited her.
The setting is the moment she sends the fan. The Kamo festival was held in the fourth month.
What prompted the poem was his asking her to send him a fan. She wrote it on the fan itself, on the reverse near the edge.
He read it, was moved, and answered. The exchange closes the section. Her poem was later included in the Shūi-shū.

Fans were held to be unlucky gifts between lovers: the word for a fan carries the sound of the word for meeting, while a fan belongs to the autumn wind, and the word for autumn is also the word for growing tired of someone. The opening refers to that custom.
What follows is that there is no use in it now: they are no longer lovers, so the taboo no longer applies.
The closing sends her bitterness along with the object — the thing itself carries it.
She sends what was asked for, and writes on the back of it. Turning the unluckiness of the gift to account, she makes the fan carry the grievance of a woman who has been left.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

Other