Ōhako no kami no tasuke ya nakarikemu chigirishi koto o omoikaeru wa

English Translation

Was there no help, then,
from the god of Ōhako?
For you turned over
in your mind what you had promised —
and turned, and went home again.

Meaning

Was there no help, then, from the god of Ōhako? For you turned over in your mind what you had promised — and turned, and went home again.

Commentary

59 The Year's End

Kaneie did come, through that rain. But the rain stopped in the night, and saying that he would come again at nightfall he went home; and since the direction was closed, he did not come after all. Since her retreat at Narutaki she had been nicknamed the rain frog, because the rain was always catching her; and this is the poem she sent to Kaneie. With it the second book closes.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. Kaneie was the third son of Fujiwara no Morosuke and would rise to be regent and chancellor. A closed direction is one barred by the reckonings of the Way of Yin and Yang, so that another day or another route had to be chosen. The rain frog was the nickname given to the author.
It is the end of the twelfth month of the second year of Tenroku, and the place is the author's dwelling.
Kaneie came through the rain, but when it stopped in the night he went home saying he would come again at nightfall; and since the direction was closed he did not come after all. This poem was sent in response.
The narrative records that the year ended with her grief unexhausted. With this poem the second book closes, and the third begins.

The god named in the opening is given as the text has it; neither its reading nor its sense is settled. The second line asks, in the conjectural mood, whether that god's help was wanting, so that the failure of a promise is laid at the door of divine protection. To raise a god rather than blame a person is a way of not stating a grievance directly, and it belongs with the poems offered at Inari and Kamo elsewhere in this diary. The fourth names what had been promised, namely that he would come again at nightfall. The verb at the close means both to turn a thing over in the mind and to go home, and on it the poem turns, so that reconsidering the promise and departing are held in one word. Behind it lies the nickname given to the author after her mountain retreat — the rain frog — and the sound of the frog may be heard in that word as well. That the woman laughed at for being always caught in the rain should be left uncalled upon because the rain stopped is an irony the nickname brings into the poem. Standing at the close of the second book, it offers no summarizing reflection and confines itself to the grievance of the moment, much as the first book ended.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other