Yookomete torinosoranewa hakarutomo yoniōsakano sekiwayurusaji

English Translation

While the night is deep
though the cock's cry, counterfeit
should seek to deceive
never in this world will it
be let through Ōsaka's gate

Meaning

Though you counterfeit the cock's cry while the night is still deep, the barrier at Ōsaka will never let you through.

Commentary

136 The Head Chamberlain Comes to the Office

The Head Chamberlain and Controller came to the Office of the Empress's Household and talked until late in the night, then said that since he had to go into ritual seclusion the next day it would not do to still be there at the hour of the ox, and returned to the palace. The following morning a letter came from him: he had meant to sit up all night over old stories, but the cock's crowing had hurried him away. She wrote back asking whether the cock that crowed so deep in the night had been Lord Mengchang's. He answered that Lord Mengchang's cock had opened the Hangu barrier so that three thousand retainers barely escaped, as the books record — but that his own concern was the barrier at Ōsaka.

The Head Chamberlain is Fujiwara no Yukinari, famous as a calligrapher, later Provisional Major Counsellor, and reckoned one of the three great brushes of his age. Lord Mengchang was a prince of Qi in the Warring States period, known for the retainer who imitated a cock's crow to have the gates of the Hangu barrier opened so that the party could escape from Qin.

The time runs from late night to the following morning; the places are the Office of the Empress's Household and the palace.

The immediate occasion is Yukinari's remark that his barrier was not Hangu but Ōsaka. Since the name of that barrier is also the verb for meeting, it carries the suggestion that the gate between the two of them, at least, might open. This poem is her reply.

Yukinari came straight back with "Ōsakawa hitokoeyasuki sekinareba torinakanunimo aketematsutoka," and the exchange is settled in a single turn. He later admitted that he had shown the letter to the other courtiers, which she duly learned. The poem was afterwards taken into the Hundred Poets anthology and is the verse by which she is best known.

The first line sets the poem at the hour of the story it draws on: before the night has broken. The second names the false cry — the imitated crow of Mengchang's retainer — and marks it as the topic, ready to be turned.

The third line concedes the attempt to deceive as a hypothetical. In the fourth, an adverb pairs with the negative to come and makes the refusal absolute. The Ōsaka barrier stood on the border between Yamashiro and Ōmi, and because its name shares a sound with the verb for meeting it had long served in poetry as a figure for lovers' meetings.

The closing auxiliary is one of negative intention: it will not let you through. Taking Yukinari's substitution of one barrier for the other, she accepts it whole and then shuts off the only thing it was meant to imply. The logic of the anecdote and the suggestion beneath it are dealt with in a single verse — and the reply that follows in the same section, "Ōsakawa hitokoeyasuki sekinareba torinakanunimo aketematsutoka," comes straight back at it.

Author

Sei Shōnagon

Source

Makura no Soshi

Other