Omoi araba mugura no yado ni ne mo shinamu hijikimono ni wa sode o shitsutsu mo

English Translation

If there is love in
you, then let us lie down in
a house grown over
with weeds — and for our bedding
spread out our own sleeves, and sleep

Meaning

If there is love in you, let us lie down in a house grown over with weeds, and spread our own sleeves for bedding.

Commentary

161 The Seaweed Sent

When Captain Ariwara was courting the Lady of Nijō, before she had entered the emperor's service and was still a private person, she sent him some hijiki seaweed with "Omoi araba mugura no yado ni ne mo shinamu hijikimono ni wa sode o shitsutsu mo". His reply has been forgotten. Later, when she was known as the consort of the Crown Prince, she made a pilgrimage to Ōharano, attended by a great many nobles and courtiers. Captain Ariwara was among them, and was standing near her carriage in the half-light. At the shrine, after gifts had been given to the company at large, she had a single robe she had been wearing passed out to him from the back of her carriage. As he received it he said quietly "Ōhara ya Oshio no yama mo kyō koso wa kamiyo no koto o omoiizurame". Remembering the past, she thought it well said. That is the whole of the section.
Captain Ariwara is Ariwara no Narihira, counted among the six poetic geniuses; his son Ariwara no Shigeharu appears in the hundred and forty-third and hundred and forty-fourth sections, and he himself exchanges poems with the Handmaid of Somedono in the hundred and sixtieth. The Lady of Nijō is Fujiwara no Takaiko, later a consort of Emperor Seiwa. Ōharano is the site of a shrine long associated with the Fujiwara family.
The setting is the period before she entered the emperor's service, while she was still a private person.
What prompted the poem was his courtship. It went with a gift of hijiki seaweed.
His reply has been forgotten, the prose says. The section then moves to the pilgrimage to Ōharano, years later.

The opening makes his feeling the condition: if there is love in you.
A house overgrown with weeds is a poor dwelling — a bold word for a woman of her standing to use.
The name of the seaweed she sent is also the word for a mat spread under one, so that the gift's name becomes the bedding of the poem.
The closing offers their own sleeves in place of a mat. With no bedding, they will sleep on what they wear. The name of the gift becomes the pun, and the poem says that poverty would be no obstacle; gift and verse work as one thing.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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