[168] The Past World, the Present World, and the World to Come. According to the Buddhist teaching, the relations subsisting between parents and children are for one life only; those between husband and wife are for two lives; while those uniting a servant to his lord or a disciple to his master endure for the space of three consecutive lives.
[169] This sentence, which so strangely reminds us of John iii., 16, is, like all the prose passages of these dramas, a literal rendering of the Japanese original.
[170] In Japan, as in England, it is usual to talk of going "up" to the capital and "down" to the country.
[171] A form of mortification current in the Shiñgoñ sect of Buddhists.
[172] Bôdhidharma, the first Buddhist Patriarch of China, whither he came from India in a.d. 520. He is said to have remained seated in abstraction gazing at a wall for nine years, till his legs rotted off. His name is, in Japan, generally associated with the ludicrous. Thus certain legless and shapeless dolls are called after him, and snow-figures are denominated Yuki-daruma (Snow Daruma).
[173] Needless to say that no such text exists.
[174] Used for carrying parcels, and for presenting anything to, and receiving anything from, a superior. The touch of the inferior's hand would be considered rude.
[175] The meaning is that, as one of the two must be under the blanket in readiness for a possible visit from the wife, the servant would doubtless feel it to be contrary to their respective positions for him to take his ease outside while his master is sitting cramped up inside—a peculiarly uncomfortable position, moreover, for the teller of a long story.
[176] The lines are in reality a bad Japanese imitation of some in a poem by Li Shang-Yin.
[177] Proverbial expressions.