THE STORY OF MIMI-NASHI-HŌÏCHI - Notes

1 See my Kottō, for a description of these curious crabs.

2 Or, Shimonoséki. The town is also known by the name of Bakkan.

3 The biwa, a kind of four-stringed lute, is chiefly used in musical recitative. Formerly the professional minstrels who recited the Heiké;-Monogatari, and other tragical histories, were called biwa-hōshi, or "lute-priests." The origin of this appellation is not clear; but it is possible that it may have been suggested by the fact that "lute-priests," as well as blind shampooers, had their heads shaven, like Buddhist priests. The biwa is played with a kind of plectrum, called bachi, usually made of horn.

4 A respectful term, signifying the opening of a gate. It was used by samurai when calling to the guards on duty at a lord's gate for admission.

5 Or the phrase might be rendered, "for the pity of that part is the deepest." The Japanese word for pity in the original text is awaré.

6 "Traveling incognito" is at least the meaning of the original phrase -- "making a disguised august-journey" (shinobi no go-ryokō).

7 The Smaller Pragña-Pâramitâ-Hridaya-Sûtra is thus called in Japanese. Both the smaller and larger sûtras called Pragña-Pâramitâ ("Transcendent Wisdom") have been translated by the late Professor Max Müller, and can be found in volume xlix. of the Sacred Books of the East ("Buddhist Mâhâyana Sûtras"). -- Apropos of the magical use of the text, as described in this story, it is worth remarking that the subject of the sutra is the Doctrine of the Emptiness of Forms -- that is to say, of the unreal character of all phenomena or noumena... "Form is emptiness; and emptiness is form. Emptiness is not different from form; form is not different from emptiness. What is form -- that is emptiness. What is emptiness -- that is form....Perception, name, concept, and knowledge, are also emptiness.... There is no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind.... But when the envelopment of consciousness has been annihilated, then he [the seeker] becomes free from all fear, and beyond the reach of change, enjoying final Nirvâna."

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