Japanese Plays and Playfellows

by Osman Edwards

Too, of your heart!

The double meaning of a “faithful” likeness and a “faithful” lover can, for once, be preserved in English. A pun on the word tokeru, which means “to melt” and “to be undone,” is allied with a dainty antithesis in

Dissolution.

White snow of Fuji

Loosened at sunrise;

Maiden’s shimada

Loosened for sleep.

The shimada is perhaps the most elaborate, and certainly the most elegant, way of dressing the hair. It is generally adopted by geisha and young married women, dividing favour with the chōchō or butterfly coiffure. Respect for age is counselled in a rather pathetic protest by an old woman, who recalls her faded beauty in a conventional image. Nightingales and plum-trees are always associated in Japanese minds.

Once.