Aoniyoshi nara ni aru imo ga takadaka ni matsuramu kokoro shika ni wa araji ka

あをによし奈良にある妹が高々に
待つらむ心しかにはあらじか

Roma-ji: Aoniyoshi nara ni aru imo ga takadaka ni matsuramu kokoro shika ni wa araji ka
English Translation: In blue-earthed Nara,
your wife, waiting there for you,
neck stretched high in hope—
the heart with which she waits,
is it not just as I said?
Meaning: Your wife in Nara, waiting for you with her neck stretched out in longing—is her heart not just as I have said?
Commentary: Book Eighteen 4107

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "A poem admonishing the clerk Owari no Okui [with short poems]." "Three envoys."
The poet asks whether the heart of the wife in Nara, waiting with her neck stretched out in longing, is not just as he has described. It is an envoy to a long poem admonishing his subordinate, the clerk Owari no Okui, who had lost his heart to the entertainer Saburuko and neglected his wife in the capital, urging him to consider his waiting wife's feelings.
Ōtomo no Yakamochi was the son of Ōtomo no Tabito, and from 746 he served as governor of Etchū. He is believed to have played a central role in compiling the Man'yōshū, and this book has the character of a poetic diary of his years in Etchū.
The headnote of the long poem cites the legal code's seven grounds on which a wife may be divorced and three on which she may not, the rule punishing bigamy, and an edict praising faithful husbands and virtuous wives, admonishing Okui on the basis of law and principle. According to the left note, it was composed on the fifteenth of the fifth month.

First line, "aoniyoshi": a pillow word for Nara.
Second line, "Nara ni aru imo ga": Okui's wife in the capital, Nara, showing the distance between Etchū and Nara.
Third line, "takadaka ni": waiting with outstretched neck, eager and longing.
Fourth line, "matsuramu kokoro": "ramu" is the auxiliary of present conjecture, "the heart with which she must be waiting now."
Last line, "shika ni wa araji ka": "shika" means "so," and "ji ka" is a negative conjecture in question form, "is it not so? Surely it is." It presses home the waiting wife's feelings described in the long poem.
Author: Otomo no Yakamochi
Source: Manyoshu
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