Kochi to ieba ōsora narishi kaze ni ide tsukete wa towamu atara nadate ni

English Translation

If you say east wind,
then come — let me entrust it
to that idle, vast
sky of a wind and ask through
it, and earn an empty name.

Meaning

If you call it the wind that says come here, then let me entrust my asking to that vast, idle wind — and earn nothing but an empty name for it.

Commentary

11 Kaneie's Visits Return

In the seventh month, about the time of the wrestling festival, Kaneie sent over a set of old robes and a set of new ones, wrapped up, asking that they be made up for him. The sight of them made the author's head swim. An old-fashioned member of the household thought it a pity, but the more spirited ones gathered and settled it among themselves — the thing was absurd, and better to be spoken ill of for failing to do it — and sent the bundles back. Sure enough, word came that he was having them made up here and there about the town. On his side too the refusal must have seemed very unkind, for more than twenty days passed without any word. Then at some point a letter came, saying that he would like to come but felt too awkward, and that if there were some definite occasion he might venture, timidly. She meant to send no answer, but the household said it was too unkind, and so she sent a poem. A reply came by return, and when the messenger came again she sent another; and Kaneie, smoothing the matter over in words, appeared once more. Gazing out at the garden flowers blooming in their various colors, they exchanged poems that were, on both sides, reproaches. Then, late in the night, when the moon of the twentieth rose above the ridge and he showed signs of leaving, the author composed a poem, and Kaneie answered it and stayed. Afterward there was something like a typhoon, and two days later he came. When the author remarked that an ordinary man would have asked how she had fared in the wind the other day, he seemed to think she had a point, and without any fuss composed a poem. Four poems passed between them, and the author, in no mood to be beaten, answered him back. Perhaps people judged that she was entitled to say as much. Then again, about the tenth month, he made to go out on some business he said could not be put off; the rain was more than could be called a passing shower, and yet he still meant to go, and in her astonishment a poem came to her lips.
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. The old-fashioned person who speaks about the robes is an elderly gentlewoman of conservative views.
It is autumn in the first year of Tentoku, two days or so after something like a typhoon, and the place is the author's dwelling.
It answers the author's retort that he might have entrusted a word to the wind.
She then returned, in no mood to be beaten, "Chirasaji to oshimi okikeru koto no ha o kinagara dani zo kesa wa towamashi." The narrative closes the exchange by remarking that people perhaps judged she was entitled to say as much.

He takes back her east wind, her wind and her tidings. The opening means: if you say it is the wind that calls come here — receiving her use of the name in which the east wind also says this way. The word in the second line means the wide sky and also careless, not to be relied on, and on that double sense the poem turns: that wind, he says, was only a wind blowing about the open sky, too unreliable to be trusted with a message. In the third and fourth lines the little exclamation means very well then, and he undertakes to entrust his asking to it after all. The close means a name uselessly made, an empty piece of gossip: send word that way and one gets nothing but talk. He takes the reproach and pushes it back by argument, and of all the poems in this section it is the closest to pure banter.

Author

Fujiwara no Kaneie

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other