Kokinshu #180

[lnhammer]

(Written the night of the Seventh.)

    These threads we offer
for Tanabata ever
    continue onward --
will their love extend like that
the length of the cord of years?

—6-16 December 2011.

(Original by Ôshikôchi no Mitsune.) On Tanabata, young women gave offerings of thread to the Weaver Maid in return for skill at working with it. As such, I understand the speaker as one of them speculating about the celestial affair, but it could be read as a single person talking about his/her own love, with the offering in third person and the festival as metaphoric dressing. The action of the middle line, uchihaete ("keeps continuing, and"), applies both to the thread above it and the years below; I made the implicit comparison explicit.


tanabata ni
kashitsuru ito no
uchi-haete
toshi no o nagaku
koi ya wataramu

---L.