(2) A very large, white radish. “Daikon” literally means “big root.”
[15] Pyrus spectabilis.
[16] An evil spirit.
(3) A common female name.
MOSQUITOES
(1) Meiji: The period in which Hearn wrote this book. It lasted from 1868 to 1912, and was a time when Japan plunged head-first into Western-style modernization. By the “fashions and the changes and the disintegrations of Meiji” Hearn is lamenting that this process of modernization was destroying some of the good things in traditional Japanese culture.
ANTS
(1) Cicadas.
[1] An interesting fact in this connection is that the Japanese word for ant, ari, is represented by an ideograph formed of the character for “insect” combined with the character signifying “moral rectitude,” “propriety” (giri). So the Chinese character actually means “The Propriety-Insect.”