O thread of my life, if you must break, then break now. If I live on, my strength to hide this love will weaken, and my feelings will overflow.
Imperial Princess Shokushi (1149–1201) was a daughter of Emperor Go-Shirakawa. Around the age of ten she was chosen by divination as Saiin, the high priestess of the Kamo shrines, and spent more than ten years in service to the gods. The Saiin was regarded as something like a wife of the deity—being forbidden to love a human being was the job itself. After stepping down she lived through, as a member of the imperial family, the turmoil that ran from the Hōgen and Heiji rebellions into the Genpei War; her brother Prince Mochihito raised troops to overthrow the Taira and died in defeat. She herself took Buddhist vows in her later years and remained unmarried all her life. She studied poetry under Fujiwara no Shunzei (Teika's father) and became the leading female poet of the Shin Kokin era. She was also the person to whom Shunzei dedicated his treatise on poetry, Korai Fūteishō.
This poem is a topic poem on "hidden love" (shinoburu koi). Yet in a thousand years no one has read it as a desk exercise—because her real life, lived under a ban on love, bursts through the frame of the assigned topic and resounds. From the quiet address "O thread of my life" (tama no o yo) erupts, all at once, a command to her own life: "if you must break, then break" (taenaba taene). The reason lies in the second half: if she goes on living, her power to endure will weaken first, and her feelings will be exposed. An ordinary love poem sings "I want to tell you how I feel." This poem is the exact opposite: rather than let the feeling be revealed, let my life end instead—staking one's life not on love's fulfillment but on its perfect concealment. The more it is pressed down, the more violently it bursts: a cry of pure inner pressure.
Princess Shokushi's cry—"if it means overflowing, then let my life break"—we layered onto a modern hidden love: a notebook where you write a name and immediately erase it, because if you write it, it becomes real. The aim was not to let this cry end as a song of death. At the end it turns over into "Thread, don't break. I want to stay in the world where you are." A song of painful, beautiful resolve: to go on living while holding a love that can be told to no one.
玉の緒よ（式子内親王・百人一首89番）／Garu JP
名前を書いて すぐ消すノート
呼びかけたくて 飲み込んだ声
すれ違うたびに うつむくくせに
夢の中でだけ 隣にいる
言えない気持ちが 胸の中で
糸みたいに 張りつめていく
玉の緒よ 絶えなば絶えね
ながらへば 忍ぶることの 弱りもぞする
あふれてしまう くらいなら
いっそ命よ 切れてしまえと
声にならない 声で叫ぶ
日記にさえも 書けない名前
書いてしまえば 本当になるから
友達の前で 泣きそうになって
なんでもないよと 笑ってみせた
こぼれないように こぼれないように
心に鍵を かけなおす
玉の緒よ 絶えなば絶えね
ながらへば 忍ぶることの 弱りもぞする
気づかれるくらいなら いっそ
この命が 先に消えてと
願う夜を 重ねている
神に仕えた 皇女は
人に恋しては いけない定め
それでも胸に 灯った想いを
祈るかたちで 燃やし続けた
玉の緒よ 絶えなば絶えね ながらへば
忍ぶることの 弱りもぞする
玉の緒よ 絶えなば絶えね
それでも糸は 切れないで
明日も言えない ままだとしても
あなたのいる 世界にいたい
誰も知らない この恋を
抱きしめたまま 生きていく
忍ぶることの…… 弱りもぞする……
玉の緒よ 絶えなば絶えね
ながらへば 忍ぶることの 弱りもぞする
切れないまま 朝が来ても
言えないままで 生きてゆく
この恋が 私のいのち
この恋が…… 私のいのち……
A notebook where I write the name, then erase it
A voice I wanted to call out, and swallowed
Though I look down every time we pass
Only in dreams are you beside me
The feelings I can't speak
Stretch tight inside me like a thread
O thread of my life, if you would break, then break
If I live on, my hiding will surely weaken
Rather than let it overflow
Better this life snap first —
I scream in a voice that makes no sound
A name I can't write even in my diary
Because written down, it would become real
Nearly crying in front of my friends
I laughed and said it was nothing
So it won't spill over, won't spill over
I lock my heart again
O thread of my life, if you would break, then break
If I live on, my hiding will surely weaken
Rather than be found out
Let this life vanish first —
Night after night, I make that wish
The princess who served the gods
Was fated never to love a man
And yet the flame that lit her heart
She kept burning in the shape of prayer
O thread of my life, if you would break, then break — for if I live on
My hiding will surely weaken
O thread of my life, if you would break, then break
And yet, thread, do not break
Even if tomorrow I still can't speak
I want to stay in the world where you are
This love that nobody knows
I'll go on living, holding it close
My hiding... will surely weaken...
O thread of my life, if you would break, then break
If I live on, my hiding will surely weaken
Unbroken, even when morning comes
I'll live on with it left unsaid
This love is my life itself
This love... is my life itself...