Hyakunin Isshu: Meet the Poets
Retired Emperor Go-Toba

Meaning

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

The poem opens with a paradox: the same people provoke both tenderness and resentment. "Ajiki-naku" (bitter/futile) qualifies the act of world-brooding itself. Unusually direct in expressing ambivalence — toward people, toward the world, and toward the self — it reads less like court verse than a private confession.

Retired Emperor Go-Toba launched the Jōkyū Disturbance in 1221 in an attempt to reclaim power from the Kamakura shogunate. He failed and was exiled to the Oki Islands, where he died. He commissioned the Shin Kokinshū and was himself a masterful poet. This poem may reflect the complex emotions of a man who loved and resented his world in equal measure.

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