越えわぶるあふ坂よりも音に聞く
なこそをかたき關としらなむ
なこそをかたき關としらなむ
- Roma-ji
-
Koewaburu ōsaka yori mo oto ni kiku nakoso o kataki seki to shiranamu
- English Translation
-
More than Ōsaka,
which you say you cannot cross,
know that Nakoso —
the barrier heard of in rumor —
is the harder one to pass.
- Meaning
- Harder than the Ōsaka you cannot cross is the barrier of Nakoso, known only by rumor. I would have you know that.
- Commentary
-
3 The Marriage to Kaneie Is Settled
Letters came from Kaneie again and again, and still the author did not answer. Her father Tomoyasu said it was a presumption to leave him waiting and that a proper reply ought to be sent, so he had a suitable person write one on her behalf. Kaneie took this in earnest and was delighted, and letters passed frequently between the houses; but he complained that the hand was not hers and asked repeatedly for an answer written by the lady herself. Each time, the household put him off with another substitute's hand, and the months went by in nothing but formal correspondence. Autumn came, and through the exchange of poems the two were drawn on toward marriage.
Kaneie was the third son of Fujiwara no Morosuke and at this time Assistant Commander of the Right Guards; he would rise to be regent and chancellor. The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu, a man of the provincial governor class who would go down to Mutsu as its governor at the end of this year.
It is autumn in the eighth year of Tenryaku, and the place is the residence of the author's father Tomoyasu.
It was composed in answer to Kaneie's lament that the barrier lay close at hand and yet he could not cross it.
Formal letters went on passing between them after this exchange. In time the two were drawn into marriage, and the exchange beginning "Yūgure no nagare kuruma o matsu hodo ni namida ōi no kawa to koso nare" follows.
The first two lines take up his inability to cross and his barrier without alteration. The phrase in the third line, to know a thing by report, is the very phrase Kaneie had used in his first poem of courtship, now turned back on him by the author. The name in the fourth line is a barrier in the north country, and it carries within it the words for do not come. The barrier that is hard to pass is one no traveller gets through. The final particle expresses a wish directed at another: I would have you know this. By saying that the northern barrier is the harder of the two, she entrusts to a place name her refusal and her wish that he stay away. The same turn of mind appears in her earlier prohibition, "Kataramu hito naki sato ni hototogisu kai nakaru beki koe na furushi so."
- Author
- The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna
- Source
- Kagero Nikki
- Other
-
- Even were I to dwell near Takasago's peak, I have never heard of an eye so startling that it would wake one out of sleep.
- The barrier that stands at Ōsaka — what is it? Though it lies so near, I cannot cross it, and so I pass my days lamenting.
- At dusk I wait for the carriage flowing toward me, and in that waiting my tears have swollen until they are the Ōi river.
- So many thoughts — at dusk upon the Ōi, they flow of themselves, not by any will of mine, and cannot be held back.