[133] The Mikado is meant. The feudal system did not grow up till many centuries later.
[134] The N-á-h-i are sounded like our English word nigh, and therefore form but one syllable to the ear.
[135] Anciently (and this custom is still followed in some parts of Japan) the hair of female children was cut short at the neck and allowed to hang down loosely till the age of eight. At twelve or thirteen the hair was generally bound up, though this ceremony was often frequently postponed till marriage. At the present day, the methods of doing the hair of female children, of grown-up girls, and of married women vary considerably.
[136] The original of this stanza is obscure, and the native commentators have no satisfactory interpretation to offer.
[137] In the original the title is "The Beggar's Dialogue," there being two poems, of which that here translated is the second. The first one, which is put into the mouth of an unmarried beggar, who takes a cheerier view of poverty, is not so well fitted for translation into English.
[138] Because, according to the Buddhist doctrine of perpetually recurring births, it is at any given time more probable that the individual will come into the world in the shape of one of the lower animals.
[139] A literal translation of the Japanese idiom.
[140] The Japanese commentators are puzzled over the meaning of the passage "with skirt uplifted, drew near and fondled me." To the European mind there seems to be nothing obscure in it. The mother probably lifted her skirt to wipe her eyes, when she was crying. It is evidently a figurative way of saying that the mother was crying.