Kumoi nite yo o furu koro wa samidare no ame no shita ni zo ikeru kai naki

English Translation

Passing my nights up
in the cloud-country, in these
long summer rains that
fall on all beneath heaven
there is no good in living

Meaning

Passing my nights up in the cloud-country, in these long summer rains that fall on all beneath heaven, there is no good in living.

Commentary

106 The Reed Leaves

The late Prince of the Ministry of Military Affairs had courted this daughter of Taira no Nakaki before the affair recorded earlier, and composed "Ogi no ha no soyogu goto ni zo uramitsuru kaze ni utsurite tsuraki kokoro o". The same prince also composed "Asaku koso hito wa miruarame Sekikawa no tayuru kokoro wa araji to zo omou", and her reply was "Sekikawa no iwama o kuguru mizu asami taenubeku nomi miyuru kokoro o". Since for all his suit she would not see him, he came again on a bright moonlit night and composed "Yonayona ni izu to mishikado hakanakute irinishi tsuki to iite yaminamu". Then one time he dropped a fan, and picking it up she saw written on it, in a hand she did not know, "Wasuraruru mi wa warekara no ayamachi ni nashite dani koso kimi o uramine"; so she wrote beside it "Yuyushiku mo omooyuru kana hitogoto ni utomarenikeru yo ni koso arikere" and sent it to him. On another occasion she composed "Wasuraruru Tokiwa no yama no ne o zo naku akino no mushi no koe ni midarete", and his reply was "Naku naredo obotsukanaku zo omooyuru koe kiku koto no ima wa nakereba". And when the same prince composed "Kumoi nite yo o furu koro wa samidare no ame no shita ni zo ikeru kai naki", her answer was "Fureba koso koe mo kumoi ni kikoekeme itodo harukeki kokochi nomi shite". That is the whole of the section.
The Prince of the Ministry of Military Affairs headed that ministry. Taira no Nakaki served as Assistant Governor of Ōmi; the hundred and fifth section tells of his daughter and the priest Jōzō, and the fifty-seventh of her fallen circumstances. The events of this section fall before those of the hundred and fifth.
The setting is the palace. The summer rains tell us the season.
The prose records nothing of what prompted it, saying only that the same prince composed this.
She answered, and that reply closes the hundred and sixth section.

The word in the first line means the clouded sky and, by extension, the imperial palace; the sense of a high place works in both.
The verb in the second line means both passing time and falling, of rain, so that living through the days and the rain coming down are one word; and the syllable before it means both night and the world.
The word for rain in the fourth line is also the word for heaven, so that under the summer rains and under heaven — that is, in this world — coincide.
The closing says there is no good in living, with an emphatic particle governing the adjective. Cloud-country, passing and falling, rain and heaven: the poem is built of puns throughout, and what it states is the misery of not meeting. Her reply takes up the cloud-country and the falling exactly as he left them.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

Other