Hyakunin Isshu: Meet the Poets
Fujiwara no Yoshitaka

Meaning

A life I once did not mind losing — now, for your sake, I wish it would last forever.

Commentary

Before this encounter, the speaker held his own life lightly — perhaps as a lover's convention, caring only for the beloved. But now that he has actually met this person, something has changed: he wants to live. Because now there is someone to live for, and the thought of this brief life ending feels unbearable.

Fujiwara no Yoshitaka was a brilliant young nobleman known for his exceptional talent and good looks. He died at just twenty-one years of age, of fever — a fact that lends this poem about wishing for a long life a haunting, poignant quality. He was the son of Fujiwara no Koremasa (Kentoku-kō, poem 45), which makes the two poems neighbors in the collection and in biography.

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