Chiji no ne wa kotoba no fuki ka fuetake no kochiku no koe mo kikoe konaku ni

English Translation

A thousand voices —
is it only words you blow
What I do not hear
is the flute called Kochiku, whose
very name says: come this way

Meaning

A thousand voices — is it only words you are blowing? For I do not hear the flute called Kochiku, whose very name says come this way.

Commentary

121 The Flute of Bamboo

A man who was visiting the daughter of the man known as the Shōni Sanetō composed "Fuetake no hitoyo mo kimi to nenu toki wa chigusa no koe ni ne koso nakarure", and her reply was "Chiji no ne wa kotoba no fuki ka fuetake no kochiku no koe mo kikoe konaku ni". That is the whole of the section.
Of the Shōni Sanetō the prose gives nothing beyond the name; a shōni was second officer at the Dazaifu. Of the man who visited his daughter it says nothing at all.
The setting is the moment his poem reached her.
What prompted it is his, "Fuetake no hitoyo mo kimi to nenu toki wa chigusa no koe ni ne koso nakarure", about crying in many voices.
This reply closes the hundred and twenty-first section. The prose passes no judgement; the section consists of the exchange alone.

She takes his thousand voices over into her own opening.
What follows asks whether it is only words he is blowing; the verb belongs with flutes, so that empty talk is made into the playing of one.
Kochiku is the name of a famous flute, and its sound is also the words for come this way. She borrows the name to say that he does not.
The closing says she does not hear it, breaking off on a particle of regret. He says he weeps; she says she hears nothing that says he is coming. Reusing the other's flute words and turning their sense is a pattern that recurs throughout this book.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

Other