[3] The metaphor is of souls sinking back into lower incarnations.
[4] See Waley, Japanese Poetry (Oxford, 1920), p. 56.
[5] Where Genji had an estate.
[6] A Chinese named Wang Chih. He watched a couple of hermits playing chess in a cave. The game absorbed his attention so completely that it seemed to him to last only a few minutes; but when it was over he found that years had elapsed and leaves had actually sprouted from the wood of his axe.
[7] Two-year-old child.
[8] Referring to the Lady of Akashi’s comparatively humble birth.
[9] Quoting the old song: ‘Your village is so far away that I must go back almost as soon as I come. Yet short as our meetings are perhaps we should be still unhappier without them.’
[10] Allusion to an old poem.
[11] The lady was unaware that he had been in love with her mistress and imagined it was of his feelings for herself that Ukon was speaking.
[12] Each competitor had to improvise a verse before the cup reached him.