[Poem composed on the day of a kagai after climbing Mount Tsukuba]
On Mount Tsukuba where the eagles live, by the spring called Mohakitsu, young women and young men invite each other and gather at the kagai, where songs are exchanged. There I too will join with other men's wives, and let other men court my wife. This is a rite the god who rules this mountain has never forbidden since ancient times. Just for today, my love, do not look at me with reproachful eyes. Do not say anything to blame me.
[Envoy]
Even if clouds rise on the peak of the male god, and the winter rain falls and soaks me through, I will not go home.
Kagai, as it was called in the eastern dialect, was an old custom in which men and women gathered on a mountain or at a market in spring or autumn, ate and drank together, and courted one another by trading songs. It is also called utagaki. Mount Tsukuba has two peaks, the male peak and the female peak, and was long worshiped as a mountain that ties the bonds between men and women.
On this one day the usual rules of marriage were loosened, and under the god's permission people could speak of love freely. The bold words of the poem, "I too will join with other men's wives, and let other men court my wife," convey well the sense of release on such a festival day.
The Hitachi Fudoki also describes the kagai on Mount Tsukuba and records a local saying: "A girl who receives no betrothal gift at the gathering on Tsukuba is no proper daughter." In other words, a girl who could not win even a courting gift at the Tsukuba utagaki was not counted as grown up. For the people of the capital, such customs of the east must have been strange and alluring.