伊勢物語: TALES OF ISE

SECTION I

Long ago there lived a young man who had just come of age

and begun to wear a hat denoting his court rank. Having an

estate in the village of Kasuga in the old capital of Nara,

he set out on a hunting expedition. In the village lived two

most attractive sisters. The young man attempted to catch a

glimpse of them through a fence when suddenly he was

overwhelmed by the thought of what a shame it was for such

beauty to go wasted in such an out-of-the-way place.

His heart was taken. Tearing off one of the loose sleeves

from his hunting cloak, he wrote a poem on it and sent it to the

sisters. The man wore a garment dyed in a random pattern as

disordered as the feelings in his heart:

A Spring day in Kasuga

Where I find young plants used for the dyeing of cloth,

As rubbed and random as the pattern of this sleeve,

Brings such feelings of love that should they be missed

Would tear my heart to shreds.

And so his message was carried to the girls.

Perhaps the occasion that had prompted him to write

such sentiments had come from an earlier poem like this:

Along the far roads of the northland,

I have traveled alone, hiding my feelings,

Rubbing out the words;

Who is it that has thrown me into confusion, I ask,

For it is not I who set such a love into motion.

People long ago certainly knew how to be

spontaneously elegant.

Translation by Kenneth L. Richard