Hitohi koso hito mo machiyoki nagaki ke o kaku nomi mataba ari katsu mashiji

一日こそ人も待ちよき長き日を
かくのみ待たば有りかつましじ

Roma-ji: Hitohi koso hito mo machiyoki nagaki ke o kaku nomi mataba ari katsu mashiji
English Translation: Just a single day,
waiting for someone is easy;
but through the long days,
if I only wait like this,
I could not go on living
Meaning: Waiting for someone for a single day is easy enough, but if I must go on waiting like this through day after long day, I could not bear to live.
Commentary: Book Four Love Poems 484

Headnote: "A poem by the younger sister of the Naniwa Emperor, presented to her elder brother, the prince dwelling in Yamato"
This exchange poem opens Book Four. Waiting a single day is bearable, the poet says, but to go on waiting day after day would be more than she could survive, and she sends this plea to her brother in Yamato. According to the headnote, it was sent by the sister of an emperor who held court at Naniwa. The frank, compact way it states the pain of waiting carries the vigor of early verse.
The opening poem of Book Two, by Empress Iwa no Hime (Book Two, 85), likewise dwells on waiting as the days pile up and echoes the "long days" here. The closing poem of this book, 792, also speaks of waiting, so that the beginning and end of Book Four answer each other in the mood of waiting.
The author, the younger sister of the Naniwa Emperor, is the sister of a sovereign who kept his palace at Naniwa. The Naniwa Emperor has been taken to be Emperor Nintoku or Emperor Kōtoku, and there is no settled view on whom the title refers to. Those who favor Kōtoku sometimes read the poem as one sent by Princess Hashihito to Prince Naka no Ōe in Yamato.

First line, "Just a single day," singles out one short day with the emphatic particle koso, preparing the contrast with the "long days" to come.
Second line, "waiting for someone is easy," closes the koso construction; since the perfective form of adjectives was not yet developed in early Japanese, it ends in the older attributive form. The sense breaks after this line.
Third line, "through the long days," reads the character for day as ke, meaning a span of many days. It pairs with "a single day" in the first line to set short and long time sharply against each other.
Fourth line, "if I only wait like this," uses the limiting particle nomi and the conditional -ba: if all I do is wait in this way.
Fifth line, "I could not go on living," joins the potential auxiliary katsu to the negative conjecture mashiji: I surely could not survive. Poem 610 in this book ends with the very same line, voicing the pain of waiting in identical words.
Author: The Younger Sister of the Naniwa Emperor
Source: Manyoshu
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