(4) Now a rokuro-kubi is ordinarily conceived as a goblin whose neck stretches out to great lengths, but which nevertheless always remains attached to its body.
(5) A Chinese collection of stories on the supernatural.
[4] A present made to friends or to the household on returning from a journey is thus called. Ordinarily, of course, the miyagé consists of something produced in the locality to which the journey has been made: this is the point of Kwairyō’s jest.
(6) Present-day Nagano Prefecture.
A DEAD SECRET
(1) On the present-day map, Tamba corresponds roughly to the central area of Kyōto Prefecture and part of Hyogo Prefecture.
[1] The Hour of the Rat (Né-no-Koku), according to the old Japanese method of reckoning time, was the first hour. It corresponded to the time between our midnight and two o’clock in the morning; for the ancient Japanese hours were each equal to two modern hours.
[2] Kaimyō, the posthumous Buddhist name, or religious name, given to the dead. Strictly speaking, the meaning of the word is sila-name. (See my paper entitled, “The Literature of the Dead” in Exotics and Retrospectives.)
YUKI-ONNA
(1) An ancient province whose boundaries took in most of present-day Tōkyō, and parts of Saitama and Kanagawa prefectures.