Oto ni nomi kikeba kanashi na hototogisu koto kataramu to omou kokoro ari

English Translation

Only by rumor
I hear of you — how grievous.
Hototogisu,
within me there lives a heart
that longs to speak with you now.

Meaning

To know you only by rumor is a grief. Cuckoo, there is a heart in me that wishes to speak with you face to face.

Commentary

2 Kaneie's Courtship

A man of the high oak branches decided to send a letter to the author. An ordinary suitor would have made his approach through a lady-in-waiting who could arrange matters, but this man dropped hints to the person who seemed to be her father, half in jest and half in earnest, and then, indifferent to how it might look, had a mounted messenger pound at the gate. There was no need to ask whom the letter came from, such was the commotion, and the household took it in with much fuss and bewilderment. When it was opened, the paper was not the usual sort, and the hand was so poor that it could hardly be the celebrated writing they had grown tired of hearing praised. The author found it all strange. What was written there was only this poem.
The man of the high oak branches is Fujiwara no Kaneie. The name comes from the oak as a byname for the Palace Guards, and Kaneie was then Assistant Commander of the Right Guards. He was the third son of the regent and chancellor Fujiwara no Morosuke, and would himself rise to be regent and chancellor. The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu, and would later bear Kaneie a son, Michitsuna. Tomoyasu belonged to the provincial governor class and would in time go down to Mutsu as its governor.
It is the eighth year of Tenryaku, early summer, when the cuckoo is heard, and the place is the residence of the author's father Tomoyasu.
This was the poem enclosed in that first letter of courtship, sent without any intermediary at all.
The author sent no reply. Kaneie went on writing again and again, which leads to "Obotsukana oto naki taki no mizu nare ya yukue mo shiranu se o zo tazunuru."

The opening phrase means to know a person only by report, without having seen or heard them directly. The exclamation that follows joins the adjective for what is painful and moving to a particle of feeling, expressing a restless, frustrated longing. The cuckoo of the third line is the woman herself, likened to a bird that lets its voice be heard but never shows itself. In the fourth line the word for speaking together carries both the sense of ordinary conversation and the sense of lovers exchanging vows. The poem closes by stating the wish outright, with no concealment of its purpose. The abruptness of a letter delivered without any go-between is carried straight into the plain, direct movement of the verse.

Author

Fujiwara no Kaneie

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other