Footnote 27: [(return)]
The supposed utterance of a belated traveler frightened by a will-o'-the-wisp. The last line allows of two readings. Kokoro-hosoi means "timid;" and hosoi michi (hoso-michi) means a "narrow path," and, by implication, a "lonesome path."
Footnote 28: [(return)]
The Japanese say of a person greatly emaciated by sickness, miru-kagé mo naki: "Even a visible shadow of him is not!"—Another rendering is made possible by the fact that the same expression is used in the sense of "unfit to be seen,"—"though the face of the person afflicted with this ghostly sickness is unfit to be seen, yet by reason of her secret longing [for another man] there are now two of her faces to be seen." The phrase omoi no hoka, in the fourth line, means "contrary to expectation;" but it is ingeniously made to suggest also the idea of secret longing.
Footnote 29: [(return)]
There is a curious play on words in the fourth line. The word omoté, meaning "the front," might, in reading, be sounded as omotté, "thinking." The verses therefore might also be thus translated:—"She keeps her real thoughts hidden in the back part of the house, and never allows them to be seen in the front part of the house,—because she is suffering from the 'Shadow-Sickness' [of love]."
Footnote 30: [(return)]
There is a double meaning, suggested rather than expressed, in the fourth line. The word shiraga, "white-hair," suggests shirazu, "not knowing."
Footnote 31: [(return)]
There is in this poem a multiplicity of suggestion impossible to render in translation. While making her toilet, the Japanese woman uses two mirrors (awasé-kagami)—one of which, a hand-mirror, serves to show her the appearance of the back part of her coiffure, by reflecting it into the larger stationary mirror. But in this case of Rikombyō, the woman sees more than her face and the back of her head in the larger mirror: she sees her own double. The verses indicate that one of the mirrors may have caught the Shadow-Sickness, and doubled itself. And there is a further suggestion of the ghostly sympathy said to exist between a mirror and the soul of its possessor.
Footnote 32: [(return)]
There are two Japanese words, keshō, which in kana are written alike and pronounced alike, though represented by very different Chinese characters. As written in kana, the term keshō-no-mono may signify either "toilet articles" or "a monstrous being," "a goblin."
Footnote 33: [(return)]
Hinagata means especially "a model," "a miniature copy," "a drawn plan," etc.
Footnote 34: [(return)]
It is not possible to render all the double meanings in this composition. Tsuka-no-ma signifies "in a moment" or "quickly"; but it may also mean "in the space [ma] between the roof-props" [tsuka]. "Kéta" means a cross-beam, but kéta-kéta warau means to chuckle or laugh in a mocking way. Ghosts are said to laugh with the sound of kéta-kéta.
Footnote 35: [(return)]
The ordinary height of a full screen is six Japanese feet.
Footnote 36: [(return)]
Kōgai is the name now given to a quadrangular bar of tortoise-shell passed under the coiffure, which leaves only the ends of the bar exposed. The true hair-pin is called kanzashi.