The Tales of Ise --Episode 1: First Crown

A long time ago, when a young man became an adult, he went hunting in Kasuga Village near the capital, Nara. This man owned land there.

In that village, there were two sisters who were incredibly beautiful.

The man happened to peek through the fence and saw them.

They were so stunning that he couldn’t look away. Their beauty seemed too extraordinary for an old town like this.

The man was wearing a hunting cloak with a special design, and he tore off a piece of the hem.

On that cloth, he wrote a poem and sent it to the sisters.

His cloak had a pattern called "shinobu-zuri."

The poem read:

"Like young purple flowers in Kasuga Field,
My heart is tangled in endless confusion,
Like the pattern on my cloak."

With this poem, he tried to act mature, using the pattern on his cloak as a clever touch. Maybe he thought it was impressive.

The poem resembles another that goes:

"Like the tangled pattern of Shinobu cloth from Michinoku,
Who is it that has made my heart so confused for the first time?"

In those days, people enjoyed these kinds of spontaneous, passionate expressions.

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