(1) A response to show that one has heard and is listening attentively.
[4] A respectful term, signifying the opening of a gate. It was used by samurai when calling to the guards on duty at a lord’s gate for admission.
[5] Or the phrase might be rendered, “for the pity of that part is the deepest.” The Japanese word for pity in the original text is “awaré.”
[6] “Traveling incognito” is at least the meaning of the original phrase,—“making a disguised august-journey” (shinobi no go-ryokō).
[7] The Smaller Pragña-Pâramitâ-Hridaya-Sûtra is thus called in Japanese. Both the smaller and larger sûtras called Pragña-Pâramitâ (“Transcendent Wisdom”) have been translated by the late Professor Max Müller, and can be found in volume xlix. of the Sacred Books of the East (“Buddhist Mahayana Sûtras”).—Apropos of the magical use of the text, as described in this story, it is worth remarking that the subject of the sûtra is the Doctrine of the Emptiness of Forms,—that is to say, of the unreal character of all phenomena or noumena... “Form is emptiness; and emptiness is form. Emptiness is not different from form; form is not different from emptiness. What is form—that is emptiness. What is emptiness—that is form... Perception, name, concept, and knowledge, are also emptiness... There is no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind... But when the envelopment of consciousness has been annihilated, then he [the seeker] becomes free from all fear, and beyond the reach of change, enjoying final Nirvana.”
OSHIDORI
[1] From ancient time, in the Far East, these birds have been regarded as emblems of conjugal affection.
[2] There is a pathetic double meaning in the third verse; for the syllables composing the proper name Akanuma (“Red Marsh”) may also be read as akanu-ma, signifying “the time of our inseparable (or delightful) relation.” So the poem can also be thus rendered:—“When the day began to fail, I had invited him to accompany me...! Now, after the time of that happy relation, what misery for the one who must slumber alone in the shadow of the rushes!”—The makomo is a short of large rush, used for making baskets.
THE STORY OF O-TEI
(1) “-sama” is a polite suffix attached to personal names.