逢ひ見ての

後の心に

くらぶれば

昔は物を

思はざりけり

ごんちゅうなごんあつただ

あいみての

のちのこころに

くらぶれば

むかしはものを

おもわざりけり 

Fujiwara no Atsutada

After our meeting

Looking in my heart

Comparing my love

With things of the past,

It is as if I never loved.

Hokusai

Fujiwara no Atsutada (906 - 943), also called Gonchunagon Atsutada, Hon'in Chunagon or Biwa Chunagon, was a nobleman and poet, and is one of the Thirty-Six Immortal Poets. His name is included in the Tales of Yamato. He was a nephew of Fujiwara no Tadahira (poem 26).

作者略伝と語釈

Some commentators see this poem as a ‘morning after’ poem, others think the lovers could not meet again or were assailed by worries or doubts about their love. It looks like Hokusai has chosen to interpret the poem as a reneger of love by the writer. The woodcut shows the ominous ceremony of Ushi-no-Toki Mairi, or the Prayer at the Hour of the Ox (two o’clock mornings), practised by jealous women who wish to take revenge upon their faithless lovers.

“When the world is at rest, at two in the morning, the hour of which the ox is the symbol, the woman rises; she dons a white robe and high sandals or clogs; her coif is a metal tripod, in which are thrust three lighted candles; around her neck she hangs a mirror, which falls upon her bosom; in her left hand she carries a small straw figure, the effigy of the lover who has abandoned her, and in her right she grasps a hammer and nails, with which she fastens the figure to one of the sacred trees that surround the shrine. There she prays for the death of the traitor, vowing that, it her petition be heard, she will herself pull out the nails which now offend the god by wounding the mystic tree. Night after night she comes to the shrine, and each night she strikes in two or more nails, believing that every nail will shorten her lover’s life, for the god, to save his tree, will surely strike him dead.”

(The Loves of Gompachi and Komurasaki by A. B. Mitford)