Hyakunin Isshu: Meet the Poets
Attendant to Empress Kōka

Meaning

For just one brief night together, like the cut end of a reed at Naniwa — must I go on longing for you forever?

Commentary

The poem is exceptionally dense with wordplay: "karine" means both "temporary sleep" and "cut reed roots"; "hito-yo" means both "one night" and "one joint of a reed stalk"; "midareru" means "disordered" and "tangled (like reeds)." A single night's meeting has scattered her heart as completely as reeds cut loose in water.

The Attendant to Empress Kōka was a court lady of the late Heian period; very little biographical information survives about her. Her poem is remarkable for the density and technical elegance of its wordplay, which earns it a place among the most accomplished poems in the entire anthology — a single night distilled into layers of interlocking meaning.

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