[Poem by Princess Nukata when Emperor Tenji hunted on Gamo Plain]
Going through the fields of purple-root, glowing madder-red, going through the forbidden fields of the court, you wave your sleeves at me like that. Won't the field warden see you?
[Reply by the crown prince (Prince Oama)]
You, glowing as lovely as the purple flower: if I hated you, would I long for you so, though you are another man's wife?
On the fifth of the fifth month of the seventh year of Emperor Tenji, a medicine hunt was held on Gamo Plain in Omi. Murasaki, purple-root, was a precious plant whose root gave a purple dye, and its field was a shimeno, a field closed to ordinary people.
Princess Nukata is said to have first been loved by Prince Oama, bearing him Princess Tochi, and later to have been taken by his elder brother, Emperor Tenji. Waving one's sleeves was a courting gesture that called the other's soul to oneself. Her former husband waves his sleeves, heedless of who may see, at his old love who is now the emperor's consort. Princess Nukata chides him, yet something like pleasure shows through. Prince Oama answers by saying "another man's wife" outright, and returns his love plainly.
There is also a strong view that the two poems were playful verses exchanged to liven up a banquet. Even so, when you think of Prince Oama, who would later fight his brother's son in the Jinshin War, and of Princess Nukata, standing between the brothers, the bright poems stir all kinds of imaginings.