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The Japanese word for granite is mikagé; and there is also an honorific term mikagé, applied to divinities and emperors, which signifies "august aspect," "sacred presence," etc.... No literal rendering can suggest the effect, in the fifth line, of the latter reading. Kagé signifies "shadow," "aspect," and "power"—especially occult power; the honorific prefix mi, attached to names and attributes of divinities, may be rendered "august."
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The puns are too much for me.... Ayashii means "suspicious," "marvelous," "supernatural," "weird," "doubtful."—In the first two lines there is a reference to the Buddhist proverb: Funa-ita ichi-mai shita wa Jigoku ("under the thickness of a single ship's-plank is Hell"). (See my Gleanings in Buddha-Fields, p. 206, for another reference to this saying.)
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Hégashi is the causative form of the verb hégu, "to pull off," "peel off," "strip off," "split off." The term Fuda-hégashi signifies "Make-peel-off-august-charm Ghost." In my Ghostly Japan the reader can find a good Japanese story about a Fuda-hégashi.
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The fourth line gives these two readings:—
Nam'mai da?—"How many sheets are there?"
Nam Aɯida!—"Hail, O Amitâbha!"
The invocation, Namu Amida Butsu, is chiefly used by members of the great Shin sect; but it is also used by other sects, and especially in praying for the dead. While repeating it, the person praying numbers the utterances upon his Buddhist rosary; and this custom is suggested by the use of the word kazoëté, "counting."
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The word furu in the third line is made to do double duty,—as the adjective, furu, "ancient"; and as the verb furu, "to shake." The old term nama-kuhi (lit., "raw head") means a human head, freshly-severed, from which the blood is still oozing.
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Two Japanese words are written, in kana, as "mé"—one meaning "a bud;" the other "eye." The syllables "hana" in like fashion, may signify either "flower" or "nose." As a grotesque, this little poem is decidedly successful.
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Ayashigé is a noun formed from the adjective ayashi, "suspicious," "strange," "supernatural," "doubtful." The word kagé signifies both "light" and "shadow,"—and is here used with double suggestiveness. The vegetable oil used in the old Japanese lamps used to be obtained from the nuts of the tsubaki. The reader should remember that the expression "ancient tsubaki" is equivalent to the expression "goblin-tsubaki,"—the tsubaki being supposed to turn into a goblin-tree only when it becomes old.
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The tree-peony (botan) is here referred to,—a flower much esteemed in Japan. It is said to have been introduced from China during the eighth century; and no less than five hundred varieties of it are now cultivated by Japanese gardeners.
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Autobiography, vol. ii, p. 470.
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Facts and Comments, p. 201.