通るべく雨はな降りそ我妹子が
形見の衣我れ下に着り
形見の衣我れ下に着り
- Roma-ji
-
Tōrubeku ame wa na furi so wagimoko ga katami no koromo are shita ni keri
- English Translation
-
Do not rain so hard
that you soak me through, O rain,
for my darling's
keepsake robe, this garment
I am wearing next my skin
- Meaning
- Rain, do not fall so hard that you soak right through—for beneath my clothes I wear the robe my beloved gave me to remember her by.
- Commentary
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Book Seven Miscellaneous Poems 1091
Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "On Rain"
A man who wears his wife's keepsake robe beneath his clothes asks the rain not to fall so hard that it soaks through to his skin and wets it. Keeping the keepsake next to his body shows his wish to feel his distant wife close to him.
Like the preceding poem it is "On Rain," but where that poem wished to be soaked in thinking of the wife, this one refuses the rain to protect her keepsake, so that contrasting feelings about rain are set side by side. The keepsake is understood as a robe entrusted by a wife to her husband setting out on a journey. The poet is unknown.
The first line, "Do not rain so hard," means so hard as to pass through the clothing to the skin.
The second line, "that you soak me through, O rain," is a prohibition with "na ... so": "rain, do not fall." The poem pauses here.
The third line, "for my darling's," repeats the opening word of the preceding poem, showing that the two poems are linked as songs of longing for a wife.
The fourth line, "keepsake robe," refers to a garment that keeps the memory of the wife.
The final line, "I am wearing next my skin," reveals by inversion the reason for rejecting the rain.
- Source
- Manyoshu
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