Nakanaka ni kimi ni koizu wa hira no ura no ama nara mashi o tamamo karitsutsu

なかなかに君に恋ひずは比良の浦の
海人ならましを玉藻刈りつつ

Roma-ji: Nakanaka ni kimi ni koizu wa hira no ura no ama nara mashi o tamamo karitsutsu
English Translation: Rather than suffer so,
halfway in love with you, I
would at Hira Bay
have been a fisher instead,
cutting the jewel-weed there
Meaning: Rather than half love you and suffer for it, I wish I had been a fisher of Hira Bay, cutting the jewel-like seaweed all day long.
Commentary: Book Eleven Love Poems Ancient and Modern I 2743

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Expressing Feelings through Things"
Rather than suffering through a half-hearted love, the speaker wishes to have been a fisher cutting seaweed at Hira Bay. The longing to escape the pain of love takes the form of envy for the simple life of fishers who know nothing of love.
This is one of the poems "Expressing Feelings through Things" in Book Eleven of the Man'yoshu, voicing its feelings through the seaside images of fishers and seaweed. Following the preceding poem, which speaks of a bitter love through the smoke of fishers boiling salt, this poem also takes up fishers, and poems tied to things of the shore are grouped here.
The left note records a variant introduced as "a certain book has this poem," in which Hira Bay is replaced by Nawa Bay and the last line reads "tamamo karu karu."
The author is unknown. The anonymous poems of Book Eleven gather love poems by people whose names have not come down to us.

First line, "nakanaka ni": "halfway, to no good end." It answers the "mashi o" later in the poem and introduces a lament about what would have been better instead.
Second line, "kimi ni koizu wa": "rather than loving you." "Zu wa," the negative "zu" with the particle "wa," carries the feeling of "if loving means such suffering."
Third line, "hira no ura no": the lakeshore at the foot of Mount Hira on the western side of Lake Biwa. The place name makes the fisher's life vivid.
Fourth line, "ama nara mashi o": "would that I had been a fisher." "Mashi" expresses a counterfactual wish, and "o" is a particle of lament. In meaning, the poem is completed here.
Fifth line, "tamamo karitsutsu": "cutting the jewel-weed." Attached to the fourth line in inverted order, it closes the poem with the image of a fisher at work, untouched by love. "Tsutsu" marks continuing action.
Source: Manyoshu
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