Hyakunin Isshu: Meet the Poets
Middle Counselor Asatada

Meaning

If there were no meetings at all, I would not have to suffer. It is because we meet that parting brings such pain.

Commentary

The poem articulates a devastating psychological truth: the rare meeting is more painful than no meeting at all. If the speaker could be certain he would never see this person again, he could grieve, accept, and eventually move on. But the occasional encounter — brief, incomplete, unsatisfying — keeps the longing alive and turns what might have been resignation into endless suffering.

Fujiwara no Asatada held the title of Middle Counselor and was a highly cultured nobleman of the mid-Heian period. His poetry is known for its lucid, paradoxical observations about the psychology of longing. The poem appears in the Gosen Wakashū and later in several other imperial anthologies.

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