ring motion of falling
cherry-petals.

[9] That is to say, the grace of their motion makes one think of the
grace of young girls, daintily costumed, in robes with long fluttering
sleeves... And old Japanese proverb declares that even a devil is
pretty at eighteen: Oni mo jiu-hachi azami no hana: "Even a devil at
eighteen, flower-of-the-thistle."

[10] Or perhaps the verses might be more effectively rendered thus:
"Happy together, do you say? Yes--if we should be reborn as
field-butterflies in some future life: then we might accord!" This poem
was composed by the celebrated poet Issa, on the occasion of divorcing
his wife.

[11] Or, Tare no tama? [Digitizer's note: Hearn's note calls
attention to an alternative reading of the ideogram for "spirit" or
"soul."]

[12] Literally, "Butterfly-pursing heart I wish to have
always;"--i.e., I would that I might always be able to find pleasure in
simple things, like a happy child.

[13] An old popular error,--probably imported from China.

[14] A name suggested by the resemblance of the larva's artificial
covering to the mino, or straw-raincoat, worn by Japanese peasants. I
am not sure whether the dictionary rendering, "basket-worm," is quite
correct;--but the larva commonly called minomushi does really construct
for itself something much like the covering of the basket-worm.

(2) A very large, white radish. "Daikon" literally means "big root."

[15] Pyrus spectabilis.

[16] An evil spirit.

(3) A common female name.

MOSQUITOES

(1) Meiji: The period in which Hearn wrote this book. It lasted from
1868 to 1912, and was a time when Japan plunged head-first into
Western-style modernization. By the "fashions and the changes and the
disintegrations of Meiji" Hearn is lamenting that this process of
modernization was destroying some of the good things in traditional
Japanese culture.

ANTS

(1) Cicadas.

[1] An interesting fact in this connection is that the Japanese word
for ant, ari, is represented by an ideograph formed of the character
for "insect" combined with the character signifying "moral rectitude,"
"propriety" (giri). So the Chinese character actually means "The
Propriety-Insect."

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of
Strange Things, by Lafcadio Hearn

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KWAIDAN: STORIES AND STUDIES ***

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