eniously
made to suggest also the idea of secret longing.]

Rikomby[=o]
Hito ni kakushit['e]
Oku-zashiki,
Omot['e] y d[:e]asanu
Kag['e] no wazurai.

[_Afflicted with the Rikomby[=o], she hides away from people
in the back room, and never approaches the front of the
house,--because of her Shadow-disease._[29]]

[Footnote 29: There is a curious play on words in the fourth line. The
word _omot['e]_, meaning "the front," might, in reading, be sounded
as _omott['e]_, "thinking." The verses therefore might also be thus
translated:--"She keeps her real thoughts hidden in the back part
of the house, and never allows them to be seen in the front part of
the house,--because she is suffering from the 'Shadow-Sickness' [of
love]."]

Mi wa koko ni;
Tama wa otoko ni
So[:i]n['e] suru;--
Kokoro mo shiraga
Haha ga kaih[=o].

[_Here her body lies; but her soul is far away, asleep in the
arms of a man;--and the white-haired mother, little knowing
her daughter's heart, is nursing (only the body)._[30]]

[Footnote 30: There is a double meaning, suggested rather than
expressed, in the fourth line. The word _shiraga_, "white-hair,"
suggests _shirazu_, "not knowing."]

Tamakushig['e]
Futatsu no sugata
Mis['e]nuru wa,
Awas['e]-kagami no
Kag['e] no wazurai.

[_If, when seated before her toilet-stand, she sees two faces
reflected in her mirror,--that might be caused by the
mirror doubling itself under the influence of the
Shadow-Sickness._[31]]

[Footnote 31: There is in this poem a multiplicity of suggestion
impossible to render in translation. While making her toilet, the
Japanese woman uses two mirrors (_awas['e]-kagami_)--one of which, a
hand-mirror, serves to show her the appearance of the back part of
her coiffure, by reflecting it into the larger stationary mirror. But
in this case of Rikomby[=o], the woman sees more than her face and
the back of her head in the larger mirror: she sees her own double.
The verses indicate that one of the mirrors may have caught the
Shadow-Sickness, and doubled itself. And there is a further suggestion
of the ghostly sympathy said to exist between a mirror and the soul of
its possessor.]

III. [=O]-GAMA

In the old Chinese and Japanese literature the toad is credited with
supernatural capacities,--such as the power to call down clouds, the
power to make rain, the power to exhale from its mouth a magic