[Composed on parting from someone at Osaka]
If the Osaka Barrier is truly, as its name says, a barrier where people meet, then please hold back you, who are leaving though we are loath to part.
[Topic unknown]
Does the cotton-tagged bird of Osaka long for someone too, as I do? It does nothing but cry aloud.
The Osaka Barrier stood on the border between Yamashiro and Omi provinces, today the border of Kyoto and Shiga prefectures. Travelers heading from the capital to the east or the north had to pass through it. So Osaka, as the boundary between capital and provinces, between parting and reunion, became a poetic place sung in many poems.
The name Osaka (Ausaka) contains the word au, "to meet." Poets used it as a pivot word, for the irony of having to part on a slope where one should meet, or as the road to a meeting with a lover. "The cotton-tagged bird" is a name for the rooster, said to come from a rite of purification in troubled times, when roosters with cotton strips tied to them were released at four barriers, Osaka among them.
As the kana preface says, "praying with offerings at Osaka Mountain," travelers made offerings to the god of the road at the pass and prayed for a safe journey. The later Gosenshu includes Semimaru's poem, "So this is it: where those going and those returning part, where friends and strangers meet: the Osaka Barrier," which grew even more famous through the Hyakunin Isshu. Those going and those returning, those known and those unknown, part and meet again. The Osaka Barrier was a place that mirrored the very meetings and partings of human life.