Hito o toku Akutagawa chō tsu no kuni no naniwa tagawanu kimi ni zo arikeru

English Translation

Akutagawa — the
river whose name says you tire
of a person fast —
in Naniwa, in Tsu: your
name does not differ from it

Meaning

Akutagawa, the river in Tsu whose very name says that you tire of a person fast: your name does not differ from it at all.

Commentary

139 The River Akuta

In the reign of the late Emperor Daigo, a woman known as the Lady of the Middle Counsellor served the consort who lived in the Jōkyōden. The late Prince of the Ministry of Military Affairs, then still young and given to love, lived nearby, and hearing that there were people of taste there he used to go and talk with them. In time he began sleeping with this Lady in secret. They lay together now and then, but before long he had almost ceased to come, and she sent him "Hito o toku Akutagawa chō tsu no kuni no naniwa tagawanu kimi ni zo arikeru". She could not eat, and wept, and pined as though ill; and one day, breaking off a branch of the pine before the Jōkyōden with snow lying on it, she composed "Konu hito o matsu no ha ni furu shirayuki no kie koso kaere awanu omoi ni". She told the messenger on no account to shake the snow off, and sent branch and poem to the prince. That is the whole of the section.
Emperor Daigo appears in the hundred and thirty-first through hundred and thirty-fourth sections. The Jōkyōden was one of the halls of the women's quarters, mentioned also in the sixty-fifth section. The Lady of the Middle Counsellor served there. The Prince of the Ministry of Military Affairs appears in the ninetieth, hundred and sixth, hundred and seventh and hundred and thirty-seventh sections, and again in the hundred and fortieth.
The setting is the period when his visits had almost ceased.
What prompted the poem was that ceasing. It was sent to him.
Afterwards she could not eat and pined as though ill, and the section moves on to the poem about the snow on the pine. This poem was later included in the Shūi-shū.

The first syllables of the river's name are also the verb for tiring of someone, so that growing tired quickly and the name Akuta are one word; the adverb before it means soon, quickly.
The particle that follows means so called, and takes up the name.
Naniwa, in Tsu province, contains the words for a name, so that the place and the phrase about a name coincide. The Akuta river is in that province.
The closing says that his name does not differ from it, with an emphatic particle governing the verb. Two place names are stacked, each contrived to point at once at tiring and at naming, and without a single word of accusation she says that he is exactly what he is called.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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