Yuyushi tote imikeru mono o waga tame ni nashi to iwanu wa ta ga tsuraki nari

English Translation

Ill-omened, they say
and shun it — and yet you would
not tell me you had
none to give. Which of us two
is the unkind one, I wonder

Meaning

Ill-omened, they say, and to be shunned — and yet you would not tell me you had none. Which of us is the unkind one?

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 after the fan and poem reached him.
What prompted his poem is hers, "Yuyushi tote imu tomo ima wa kai mo araji uki o ba kore ni omoiyoseten", written on the back of the fan, which moved him.
This reply closes the ninety-first section. The prose passes no judgement; the section consists of the exchange alone.

He takes her opening words over whole, repeating the phrase about shunning what is ill-omened — the standard shape of an answering poem.
The concessive that follows carries regret: a thing to be shunned, and yet.
What she would not do is tell him she had none. Since the gift was an unlucky one, she might easily have refused it.
The closing asks which of them is the unkind one. Where she spoke of her own bitterness, he asks whose coldness is really at issue. Framed as a complaint that she granted his request, it says underneath that the tie between them has not been cut.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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