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Audio: NHK Creative Library
Read by LibriVox volunteer Larry Wilson.
Audio courtesy of LibriVox (Public Domain).
後鳥羽院
人もをし
人もうらめし
あぢきなく
世を思ふゆゑに
物思ふ身は
よをおもふ
ゆゑにもの
おもふみは
ひとも
- Poem 99
- 人もをし
人もうらめし
あぢきなく
世を思ふゆゑに 物思ふ身は
Author: Retired Emperor Go-Toba (1180–1239)
Source: Zoku Gosen Wakashū, Miscellaneous
- English Verse Translation
- How I regret my fallen friends How I despise my foes! And, tired of life, I only seek To
reach my long day's close, And gain at last repose.
— William N. Porter, 1909
- Modern Translation
- I find people both dear and hateful. It is because I care so deeply about this troubled world that I am always lost in thought.
- Commentary
- This poem lays bare the inner turmoil of Retired Emperor Go-Toba, torn between rising tensions with the increasingly powerful Kamakura shogunate and the declining authority of the imperial court. It was composed when Go-Toba was thirty-three, nine years before he would go on to raise the Jōkyū War.
- About the Poet
- Retired Emperor Go-Toba ascended the throne without the complete Three Sacred Treasures of the Imperial Regalia, a fact that troubled him deeply. As if to overcome that sense of inadequacy, he trained himself relentlessly, mastering waka poetry, go, swimming, horsemanship, and hunting alike. Yet his confidence may have grown excessive: in 1221, he issued an imperial edict calling for the overthrow of Hōjō Yoshitoki, but failed to win the support of the eastern warriors, was defeated in the ensuing conflict, and was exiled to the island of Oki.
- Retired Emperor Go-Toba's Chart of the Heart
-
A chart and a modern-language reflection of the poet's inner feelings.
The Poet's Feelings (A Personal Interpretation)
The human heart is ever-changing —
capable of both deep affection and quiet resentment.
Watching this shifting world go by,
I sink alone into a profound and heavy sorrow.
- Poem Illustration
-
This image is based on an illustration from William N. Porter's A Hundred Verses from Old Japan, his 1909 English translation of the Hyakunin Isshu published in England, colorized and reworked using Adobe Firefly (generative AI).