[80] ながか (Nagaka)

 Poem Meaning and Background

"Woman in Blue Combing Her Hair" by Goyō Hashiguchi

長からむ・心も知らず・黒髪の

nagakaran・kokoro mo shirazu・kurokami no

乱れて今朝は・物をこそ思へ

midarete kesa wa・mono o koso omoe

〜待賢門院堀河（Taiken-mon'in no Horikawa）

Translation

Is it forever

That he hopes our love will last?

He did not answer.

And now my daylight thoughts

Are as tangled as my black hair.

Meaning

The theme of this poem was a response to a message from a man who had spent the night with his lover. At the time, it was customary for a nobleman to send a poem the next morning after spending the night with his lover. Such a poem is called 「後朝の歌」(kinuginu no uta) literally, "the morning after poem". In the original Japanese, the author Horikawa expresses that the man has promised to love her for a long time. However, now that the man has gone home the next morning, doubt begins to creep in and she starts to wonder whether his words were true. She likens her conflicted feelings to her own long, tangled hair. 

In the first line, 長からむ (nagakaran) means that the man has promised to love her forever (though the English translation above seems to suggest something else). The phrase 長, "long" also serves to reinforce the metaphor the author uses later when comparing her long, tangled hair to her own tangled thoughts. 心も知らず (kokoro mo shirazu) means that the author cannot be sure whether her lover's professed feelings are true. 乱れて(midarete) means "tangled", and is used to describe both the author's hair after waking, and her feelings. 物をこそ思へ (mono o koso omoe) means that the author is totally absorbed in these thoughts. 

Author

Taiken-mon'in no Horikawa (dates unknown) was a poet and noblewoman in the Heian period. She was a member of the Miyamoto clan, and her title shows that she was an attendant to Empress Taiken, who was Empress to Emperor Toba and mother of Emperor Sutoku (author of [77] Se). Before that, she was an attendant to Princess Reishi, daughter of Emperor Shirakawa.