[52] Page 80—This is a particularly difficult passage. I had previously rendered the lines more freely than the rest of the translation, in an endeavour to construct a consecutive verse which might keep the attention of an English reader. In its present form the verse is perhaps nearer the original, but no entirely literal translation is possible of a passage so full of the essentially Japanese “pillow” and “pivot” words. At the outset the Mother quotes a few words from an old poem.
[53] Page 80—The Japanese word yuki means both “snow” and “going.”
[54] Page 81—Most of these three lines is added for the sake of rounding off the thought in English.
[55] Page 81—This is not the large commercial town of the same name.
[56] Page 82—The bond of the relationship between a parent and child. According to the Buddhistic belief, re-incarnation in the same relations of parent and child holds only for this world. (That between lovers is generally supposed to be of longer duration.)
[57] Page 82—Reference to an old Chinese fable of a bird who had four young, and was bitterly distressed when the time came for them to fly away.
[58] Page 82—Sumi means the corner, or end of everything.
[59] Page 83—Local ferries sometimes hindered strangers from the city, but she intimates that the Sumida is a river of too great importance to expect such treatment on it.
[60] Page 83—“That word” is the word for “repute,” which has a root the same as “if true the name” in the famous poem which she quotes. The line depends on one of the Japanese “pivot words.”
[61] Page 83—Narihira is one of the well-known early poets of Japan, he died in 880. Chamberlain, in his Classical Poetry of the Japanese, quotes an opinion of Tsurayuki (who died in 946) on Narihira. He says: “Narihira’s stanzas are so pregnant with meaning that the words suffice not to express it. He is like a closed flower that hath lost its colour, but whose fragrance yet remaineth.” Narihira is noted among the classical poets for his conciseness and frequent obscurity.