Waiting and Waiting: Poem Number 53

The fourth poem in our series dedicated to women is by the author of the famous diary, the Gossamer Years, or kagerō nikki (蜻蛉日記):

Japanese	Romanization	Translation
なげきつつ	Nageki tsutsu	The span of time
ひとりぬる夜の	Hitori nuru yo no	that I sleep alone, sighing,
明くる間は	Akuru ma wa	until night lightens—
いかに久しき	Ikani hisashiki	can you know at all
ものとかは知る	Mono to ka wa shiru	how long that is?

The name of the author is unknown. She is only known as Udaishō Michitsuna no Haha (右大将道綱母, c. 937-995), or “The Mother of Michitsuna, Major Captain of the Right” both in the Hyakunin Isshu and in the Gossamer Years. Her son, Michitsuna, went on to be a Court official who held the prestigious post of Major Captain of the Right.

The Mother of Michitsuna, was the second wife of the powerful and ambitious Fujiwara no Kane’ie, and her diary, like this poem, reflects her pain and frustration as her husband slowly slips away from her and into the arms of other women. As the modern Japanese proverb goes: eiyū iro wo konomu (英雄色を好む), meaning “great men prefer color”. In other words, after Kane’ie had snagged his beautiful new bride, the mother of Michitsuna, he was off on his next conquest, and this pattern would continue throughout their marriage. His trophy wife was thus abandoned except when he needed her for some reason.

According to her diary, at times the couple reconciled somewhat, but over time they became more and more estranged, and the author thus felt more depressed and abandoned as the years wore on.

This poem actually comes from the Gossamer Years, book one, when her husband Kane’ie is spending his nights in a back-alley with a low-class woman in a short-lived affair (Kane’ie soon abandoned that woman even after she bore him a son). As she writes:

Two or three days later I was awakened toward dawn by a pounding on the gate. It was he, I knew, but I could not bring myself to let him in, and presently he went off, no doubt to the alley [and the mistress] that interested him so.

I felt that I could not let things stand as they were. Early the next morning I sent, attached to a withered chrysanthemum, a poem written with more care than usual.

translation by Edward Seidensticker, pg. 38

What’s important to understand is that this poem wasn’t something she composed for a poetry contest (i.e. poems 40 and 41), she was genuinely expressing her frustration and rage at being abandoned by her husband. Fujiwara no Teika, no doubt impressed with the poem and the story behind it, included it in the Hyakunin Isshu generations later.

P.S. Featured photo is of a gate at a Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan. No machine-readable author provided. Fg2 assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons