Hyakunin Isshu: Meet the Poets
Mibu no Tadamine

Meaning

Ever since that cold dawn when we parted, I have come to dread the break of day more than anything in the world.

Commentary

In the world of Heian love poetry, the dawn parting was a defining moment. Aristocratic men visited their beloved under cover of darkness and were obliged to leave before dawn, when the waning moon was often still visible. The cold, indifferent face of that moon became a symbol of the cruelty of timing — it witnesses the parting but offers no comfort.

Mibu no Tadamine was one of the four compilers of the Kokinshū. This poem focuses not on the beauty of the moon itself but on the painful association it has acquired: every time the pre-dawn hour approaches, the memory of that parting returns with it.

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