[85] Mochi: it is still the custom in Japan to serve a cake made of beaten rice on New Year's Day, the great festival of the year. The sound of this beating is heard from house to house throughout the country, and gives everybody a holiday feeling. The ceremonies last three days.
[86] These colour combinations were very subtle because the effect was produced by the play of one or perhaps two colours showing through one another.
[87] One of the young women who had danced the Gosetchi.
[88] Fujiwara Michitaka, the Prime Minister's brother.
[89] This lady was one of the greatest poets Japan has ever produced. See her diary, which is the record of her liaison with a young prince.
[90] A daughter of the famous court lady, poet, and historian Akazomé Emon, to whom the court history of the time is traditionally ascribed.
[91] Seishonagon. A lady famous for her learning and wit and with a little reputation for daring. Pretty and vivacious, learned and witty, she was allowed liberties unrebuked—one may call her the New Woman of the day. She served in the court of the first Queen Sadako, daughter of the Prime Minister's brother. The two Queens were in rivalry. Seishonagon was the literary light of that court, as Murasaki Shikibu and Izumi Shikibu were of this.
[92] Because one may be bewitched; ancient belief dating from long before her day.
[93] A koto is called a horizontal harp, but it consists of a number of strings stretched the length of the instrument, the scale made by an arrangement of bridges placed under the strings, and played upon by four ivory keys worn on the four fingers of the right hand.
[94] Her husband who was a scholar in Chinese literature. He died in 1001. It is now 1008.