Sode o shimo kasazarishikado tanabata no akanu wakare ni hichinikeru kana

English Translation

It was not that I
lent out my sleeves to anyone
and yet at that part-
ing, the unsated parting
of Tanabata, they were soaked

Meaning

It was not that I lent my sleeves to anyone; and yet at that unsated Tanabata parting, they were soaked through.

Commentary

114 The Parting at Tanabata

The Katsura Princess met a man in secret at the time of Tanabata and sent him this poem. The prose says no more, and the section consists of this single poem.
The Katsura Princess lived at Katsura and has poems in the twentieth, twenty-sixth, seventy-sixth and seventy-seventh sections, and appears again in the hundred and seventeenth. Of the man the prose tells us nothing.
The setting is the season of Tanabata, the one night in the year on which the Herdboy and the Weaver Maid are said to meet, a festival long associated with meeting and parting.
What prompted the poem was the parting after that secret meeting. It was sent to him.
The section ends with the poem; no reply and no later event is recorded. Following the hundred and thirteenth section, which turns on a sleeve, this one turns on sleeves too.

The opening denies having lent out her sleeves, with an emphatic particle and a concessive that carries into what follows. It was a custom at Tanabata to lend robes, and the poem rests on that.
The unsated parting is the parting of the Herdboy and the Weaver Maid, who meet once a year and must always leave too soon.
The verb that closes the poem means to be soaked, drenched, and its final particles combine noticing with regret.
The whole is built as a piece of reasoning: lending them out would have wetted them, and she lent them to no one, so what wetted them was tears. A woman meeting in secret is laid over a meeting that comes once a year.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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