Yamagatsu no ato machiidete kurabureba koi masarikeru kata mo arikeri

English Translation

Waiting to see the
woodsman's after-shape, and then
comparing them — well,
one side has the fuller calf,
and the fuller love as well.

Meaning

Waiting to see what the woodsman became, and comparing the two, I find one side has the fuller calf — and the fuller love as well.

Commentary

26 Exchanges with the Lady of the Jōganden

Toward the end of the twelfth month the lady of the Jōganden withdrew to the house on the west. On the last day of the month there was a sudden earthquake, and from midday on it went on rumbling and rattling while she sat watching it alone; and so the year turned to the first of Anna. About midday on New Year's Day, since no men were about among the guest's household, all was quiet. Hearing that the lady was still next door, they laughed together over what one waits for on such a day; and while they were at it, someone idly fetched a little figure of a man made of millet, pressed it against the leg-end of the pheasant from before, wrote on it, and sent it in to the lady. She dried some seaweed, tore it into short pieces, tied them together, shifted the load to the end of the pole, carved a calf onto the leg that had been thin, and sent it back larger than it had come. When the day was well up the festival food was served; the same was done in this house, and the fifteenth also passed in the usual way. The third month came. A letter that seemed meant for the guest's household was misdelivered here. It read that he could not leave things as they were and thought of calling before long, but that there might be someone who would rather it were not he. Since the lady had long been used to seeing such things, the author supposed this was how it went; even so she did not let it pass, but wrote a few words very small, and sent it back saying that it should be taken to that lady. When the lady had read it a reply came at once. Since this lady attended the Crown Prince almost as a mother, she was bound to go to the palace. She said again and again that she could not stay as she was, and so the author called on her in the evening. Just then voices were heard on the other side; the lady kept saying so, so, but the author would not attend to it, and the lady seemed to be growing drowsy as one does in the early evening. Then someone came walking up and made an announcement, and the author went home without any ease of mind. The next evening the lady went to the palace. In the fifth month, when she withdrew to put off mourning for the Emperor, it had been arranged that she should come here as before; but saying she had seen something inauspicious in a dream, she withdrew to the other house. Since portents kept coming in dreams, and she wished there were some way of averting them, in the seventh month, on a night of very bright moon, she sent a poem. Four poems on dreams follow, and then an exchange on a river.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. The lady of the Jōganden was a daughter of Fujiwara no Morosuke and a consort of the late Emperor Murakami, and Kaneie's sister; the text gives no name, and she is taken to be Fujiwara no Tōshi. At the end of the previous year she had withdrawn to the house immediately west of the author's, and the exchanges that follow depend upon that nearness. The writer of the misdelivered letter is Kaneie, third son of Fujiwara no Morosuke, who would rise to be regent and chancellor.
It is the first month of the first year of Anna, and the place is the lady's residence next door on the west.
It accompanied the figure she returned — the seaweed tied together and shifted to the end of the pole, a calf carved onto the leg that had been thin, and the whole made larger than it came — in answer to the poem written on the figure about a load carried on one side.
After this exchange the festival food was served when the day was well up; the same was done in the author's house, and the fifteenth passed in the usual way. The exchanges with this lady continue.

She takes back the woodsman unchanged. The opening names the figure again, and the second line means waiting to bring out what it became afterward — the act of working on the thing and sending it back is itself put into the verse. The third sets up a comparison and passes to the fourth, where the word means the calf of a leg and also love, and the poem turns on it: the craft of carving a calf onto the thinner leg becomes, without alteration, the statement that one side has the greater love. In the close, the word for side means a direction or a party, and it also receives the other's word for one side only, shifting a complaint about being weighted on one side into an observation that one of the two is the greater. The act of altering a doll and returning it and the act of returning words in a poem coincide exactly, and this pair is among the most elaborately contrived in the section.

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other