Kami-nagaki

髪ながき/少女とうまれ/しろ百合に
　　　額は伏せつつ/君をこそ思え
(山川登美子 1879-1909)

kami-nagaki / otome to umare / shiro yuri ni
　　　nuka ha fusetsutsu / kimi wo koso omoe
(Yamakawa Tomiko 1879-1909)

being born a
long-haired girl,
hiding my face
　　　in lilies
　　　I yearn for you


There's something odd about the idea of a girl born with long hair, but the 'ki' ending of 'nagaki' clearly attaches it to 'otome' (if you're not sure about this, look up 'rentai-kei' on google). Even if the phrasing is odd, it's easy to see what she means though. We get the idea of a traditional woman's role in courtship, though the fact that Yamakawa wrote this poem means she wasn't as shrinking as all that. Yamakawa tends to get mentioned most in connection with the more famous Yosano Akiko, as well as Yosano Tekkan, whose poems I looked at in earlier entries. Yosano Akiko (née Ho) married Yosano Tekkan, but Yamakawa was the other point on their love triangle, and is said to have been Akiko's lover as well as Tekkan's.

I wonder if I'd like this poem less if I knew nothing about Yamakawa's life. There seems to be more subtext in Japanese poetry than English poetry in general, and knowing under what circumstances a poem was written is often important to appreciating the meaning. If this is a kind of 'courtship' poem (for want of a better word) for Yosano Tekkan, it becomes more interesting in the gap between what it's saying and what it's doing. Unfortunately Yamakawa died young, of tuberculosis at the age of 29.

Alternate searches:

'kaminagaki', 'nuka ha fusetsutsu', 'kimi o koso omoe'