Suminoe no hama ni yoru to iu utsusegai minaki koto mochi are koime ya mo

住吉の浜に寄るといふうつせ貝
実なき言もち我れ恋ひめやも

Roma-ji: Suminoe no hama ni yoru to iu utsusegai minaki koto mochi are koime ya mo
English Translation: Like the empty shells
which, they say, wash on the shore
by Suminoe's strand,
with words that are void of substance
would I ever dare to love?
Meaning: Like the empty shells said to wash up on the beach of Suminoe, would I love you with hollow words? Never.
Commentary: Book Eleven Love Poems Ancient and Modern I 2797

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Expressing Feelings through Things"
Like the empty shells said to wash up on the beach of Suminoe, the speaker would never love with hollow words, without substance: so the poem asserts the truth of this love. It may also be read as a reply to a lover's doubts, a pledge of sincerity.
In the sequence on shells, following the shell of forgetting and the shore shell of the preceding poems, this poem takes up the empty "utsusegai." Where the earlier poems sang of one-sided love or of not forgetting, this one is concerned with the sincerity of love's words, keeping the shell as a preface while changing the theme.
The author is unknown. The anonymous poems of Book Eleven gather the love poems of people whose names have not come down to us.

First line, "suminoe no": "of Suminoe," the area of present-day Sumiyoshi Ward in Osaka. The place, read "Suminoe" in ancient times, is often sung in the Man'yoshu. The first three lines form a preface leading to "minaki" (without substance).
Second line, "hama ni yoru to iu": "that, they say, wash up on the beach." "To iu" marks hearsay and shows these to be the well-known shells of the Suminoe shore.
Third line, "utsusegai": an empty shell whose flesh is gone. Its hollowness leads into "minaki" below.
Fourth line, "minaki koto mochi": "with words without substance." "Mi" overlays the flesh of the shellfish with sincerity or truth, pointing to empty words.
Fifth line, "are koime ya mo": "would I love so? Never." "Me" is the conditional form of the conjectural "mu," and "ya mo" makes it a strong rhetorical question.
Source: Manyoshu
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