Kazuraki no kumode wa izuko yatsuhashi no fumi mitekeri to tanomu kai naku

English Translation

Where are they, those spider-
legged bridges of Katsuragi?
At Yatsuhashi
I trod, I sent, and it was
seen — and to no purpose at all.

Meaning

Where are they, the spider-legged bridges of Katsuragi? At Yatsuhashi I trod — I sent, and it was seen — and to no purpose at all.

Commentary

100 Michitsuna and the Woman of Yatsuhashi

The Assistant Master was suddenly called on to dance at the special festival, and from the rehearsal to the day of the festival everything was in a rush. On the day itself the author went out in her carriage to watch, and among the ranks of nobles' carriages she saw with some embarrassment how splendid the party of a certain person appeared. Then someone took it upon himself to say that the Assistant Master ought not to go on as he was, and through that a correspondence was begun with a woman. She was perhaps someone about Yatsuhashi. He sent the first poem, but no answer came that time. He sent another, and this time she replied. After that the exchange continued, on the difficulty of the road, the cloud-paths of the open sky and the peril of a bridge of cloud, until eight poems had passed. That day it grew dark and they left off.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. The Assistant Master is her son Fujiwara no Michitsuna, appointed Assistant Master of the Right Stables that year. Of the woman the text says only that she was perhaps someone about Yatsuhashi, and gives no name. Yatsuhashi is a poetic place in Mikawa, where eight bridges were said to be laid across a stream, spread out like the legs of a spider.
It is about the eleventh month of the second year of Tenen, and the place is the woman's house about Yatsuhashi.
No answer having come to the first poem, he sent this one after it.
This time a reply came: "Kayou beki michi ni mo aranu yatsuhashi no fumi miteki tote nani tanomuramu."

The opening carries over the place name of the first poem and hands on to the second line, where the spider-legs are the shape of something divided into many strands; since Yatsuhashi was a place where several bridges were laid across a stream, the two words are habitually joined. The question means: where are they? — that is, the road is not to be found. The third names the poetic place in Mikawa, both indicating where she lives and introducing the word in the fourth line, which means both treading a bridge and a letter; on it the poem turns, so that crossing a bridge and sending a letter come together. What follows means that it was seen — the letter must certainly have arrived. The close means: and to no purpose, and trails off in a complaint at having had no answer. Passing from Katsuragi to Yatsuhashi by way of the spider-legs, it is well built as a second attempt to draw an answer.

Author

Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other