Spin & Discover Kakekotoba!
Poem 14: Minister of the Left of Kawara
Try to find the kakekotoba hidden in the poem and tap it.
The word you tap will spin right where it is, revealing its two meanings in turn.
陸奥の
しのぶもぢずり
誰ゆゑに
乱れそめにし
我ならなくに
Commentary
The word "shinobu" is a kakekotoba.
A kakekotoba layers two meanings onto a single word that sounds the same either way.
Here, "shinobu" carries both the place name "信夫" (Shinobu) and "忍ぶ" (to endure in secret).
Like the tangled dye pattern of "shinobu-mojizuri" cloth, woven in the Shinobu region, my heart has begun to grow tangled because of you — even though I had been enduring it all in secret. This aching love is expressed by layering the feeling onto a place name.
Packing two meanings into just thirty-one syllables is exactly what makes kakekotoba so appealing.
Vocabulary
A broad region centered on the Pacific side of what is now the Tōhoku area — Fukushima, Miyagi, Iwate, Aomori, and part of Akita (the northeast).
A place in the Shinobu district of Mutsu (around present-day Fukushima City), known for a dyeing technique called "shinobu-mojizuri."
To hide one's feelings from others, to endure.
A dyeing technique from the Shinobu region that used plants to print a tangled pattern onto cloth.
Because of whom.
Has begun to grow tangled.
Even though it is not me. "Nakuni" expresses a negated exclamation.