¹ Tosa Shōgen might refer to the painter Tosa Motonobu (1424?-1525?), who was granted the court rank of shōgen (colonel of the Inner Palace Guards, Right) in 1495. However, other members of the Tosa painter family, including Yukihiro (ca. 1406-34), Mitsumoto (ca. 1530-68), Mitsuoki (1617-91), and Mitsuoki's son Mitsunari (1646-1710), were granted the same court rank. He-gassen scrolls depicting farting battles and contests were painted in the Edo period.

² Kan is a unit of money equaling 1,000 mon. Mon is a currency that began circulating in 1336 and was replaced by the yen in 1870.

³ The phrase, “umaretsukige no maruhadaka hakkan,” encompasses several terms: umaretsuki no maruhadaka (born stark naked), tsukige (dapple-grey horse, a fine mount for military leaders), hadauma (Bareman Saburō Dirtskin's horse), and hadaka hyakkan (a man penniless but worth one hundred kan).

⁴ In the twelfth century B.C., the brothers Po I and Shu Ch'i (Japanese pronunciation Hakui and Shukusei) unsuccessfully tried to dissuade King Wu of Chou from killing King Chou of In. The brothers hid in the mountains and eventually starved to death.

⁵ According to Buddhist beliefs, the Three Great Calamities (fire, water, and wind) occur after the first two of the four stages of the world (becoming, staying, destruction, and vacuity), ushering in the third stage. The interval between the three disasters and the stage of vacuity is said to have twenty cycles.

⁶ An allusion to a line in the poem “Recommending Wine” by T'ang Dynasty poet Po Chü-i: “Even if wealth reaches the Big Dipper after life, it is inferior to one barrel of wine in this life.” See, for example, Burton Watson, Po Chü-i: Selected Poems (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 127-31: “Before the big dipper traverse migrating wide geese under the moon over the south tower the sound of fulling cloth for the winter” comes from a poem by Liu Yüan-shu in the Wakan rōeishū (Japanese and Chinese Poems to Sing, compiled around 1013). See, for example, Thomas Rimer and Jonathan Chaves, Japanese and Chinese Poems to Sing (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 346.

⁷ An idiom from warrior tales that conveys the idea of countless warriors pressing forward.

⁸ Amida Buddha is said to have meditated on his (her) pledge to save humans for the period of five kalpas. A kalpa is the time it takes for the highest mountain to be worn down by a feather being brushed over it once every hundred years.

⁹ From the famous opening lines of the Tale of Heike: “The Gion bell tolls the impermanence of all things. / The color of the twin sala trees' blossoms / Attests to the fact that even the prosperous are bound to decline.” Helen McCullough, Genji & Heike: Selections from The Tale of Genji and The Tale of the Heike (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 265.

¹⁰ A bridge over the Higashi Yokobori River; also the name of the area west of this river. Common places for begging were by the entrances of bridges, in front of temples, and on streets, especially in the pleasure quarters.

¹¹ All are Osaka districts. Tobita, in western Osaka, was known for its graveyard and execution site. Tobita, therefore, suggested one sentenced to death. Dōtonbori, the area south of the Dōtonbori River, was designated in 1626 as a theater district, and its entertainments drew crowds. Tennōji is the sites of the four Tennō temples. Tenma was known for the Tenmangū Shrine, which enshrines Heian poet and scholar Sugawara no Michizane (845-903). A tax-exempt kaito was found in each of these four places.

¹² Goki, originally a bowl with a lid, was a begging bowl used by monks and beggars.

¹³ “On-duty beggars” (bankojiki) refers to beggar guards (kaitoban) who stayed in a shed just outside an urban residence to protect against theft and other disturbances.

¹⁴ Common expression for being forlorn. The expression is used in Book 9 of the Taiheiki when the Hōjō warriors in Kyoto find that Shogun Ashikaga Takauji has betrayed them.

¹⁵ Common depiction of Buddhist hell.

¹⁶ Sangō, literally “three rivers.” Phrase that originally referred to the three longest rivers in China here applied to Osaka.

¹⁷ Minazuki is one of the names for the sixth month in the lunar calendar.

¹⁸ “Becoming a pauper” refers to famine refugee beggars, differentiating them from permanent city beggars.

¹⁹ The standard hairstyle for men was a topknot and a shaven front. The poor and discriminated are said to have worn a bun without shaving the front (like women) or to have kept their hair cut and unbound (like children).

²⁰ The Japanese version of Chung K'uei, a Chinese god said to expel demons and diseases, is usually represented as big-eyed, angry, bearded, booted, and dressed in black, holding a drawn sword. The image is derived from a legend about T'ang Emperor Hsüan-tsang's dream in which Chung K'uei, a local official, appeared and conquered evil spirits to cure the emperor's illness.

²¹ An iron gaff is either a long-handled weapon used to pull an enemy boat or a short-handled tool for catching fish. Fan K'uai and Chang Liang (Hankai and Chōryō in Japanese) are heroic retainers of the Han dynasty founder Liu Pang. The lengthy account in the Taiheiki, Book 28 of the battles of Han and Ch'u emphasizes Fan K'uai's righteous rage in the well-known Hungmen banquet scene (206 B.C.) and Chang Liang's military strategies at Hungmen and elsewhere. Collecting waste paper and waste cloth to recycle was one of the ways that hinin earned a living. See Ōsakashi-shi hensanjo, Shinshū Ōsakashi-shi shi, vol. 3 (Ōsaka: Ōsakashi, 2009), 865.

²² Yunoko is rice gruel made from the burnt rice that sticks to the pot. Bareman Saburō Dirtskin's speech humorously echoes the tone of military leaders.

²³ Kōzu is an area south of the Dōtonbori River.

²⁴ “Rice chewer” (komekami, short for komekami bikuni) means a young disciple nun.

²⁵ Kōnoike, literally “storks' pond,” is a place in Settsu province, now around Kōike, Hyōgo Prefecture, known as a producer of sake. A sake bag is used to squeeze out unrefined sake.

²⁶ Kotsuma (now in Nishinari) and Nagai are names of places in Osaka.

²⁷ Rice, barley, two kinds of millet, and beans were the five standard grains. “Scooping steamed wine rice” (sakameshi suku'u, also called sakakowai) is a reference to activities of the winter brewing season. It also suggests that there will be enough rice to brew in the next big harvest. Processing grains was usually banned during famine.

²⁸ Banners of straw mats evoke a peasant uprising.

²⁹ Roof-tile making was a major construction industry in Osaka. A record remains of a master tile producer who shipped 2,861,000 roof tiles to Edo in the fourth month of 1704. See Ōsakashi-shi hensanjo, 818.

³⁰ Thorny barriers (sakamogi), uprooted trees placed upside down as blockades, are frequently mentioned in the Taiheiki.

³¹ This passage echoes a famous scene in Book 9 of the Taiheiki. On turning openly against the Hōjō, Ashikaga Takauji asks Hikida no Myōgen to write a supplication at a Hachiman Shrine in Shinomura.

³² Jinmu (reign ca 660 BC-585 BC) is the legendary first emperor of Japan. Nintoku, exact reign dates unknown but believed to be 313-399, was the sixteenth Japanese emperor. Go-Daigo (885-930), reigning during the Engi era in the Heian period, has been regarded as an ideal emperor because of his successful imperial rule without regency. The first imperial poetic anthology Kokin wakashū (Collection of Poems from Ancient and Modern Times, commonly abbreviated as Kokinshū) was compiled in 905 during his reign. Murakami (926-967) of the Tenryaku era (947-957) also ruled directly. “Return to the old days of Tengi and Tenryaku” was the slogan of Go-Daigo, the central imperial figure in the Taiheiki.

³³ The barbarians to the east, west, north, and south of China. Here, the beggars in the four regions of Osaka.

³⁴ In the Taiheiki, Ashikaga Takauji offers supplication in the sacred hall along with a whistling arrow. His immediate subordinates follow his example and offer one whistling arrow each.

³⁵ In the Taiheiki, the sign that the supplication Ashikaga Takauji asked Myōgen to write to show success is a pair of turtledoves that flutter over the white banner. They then perch on the bead tree before the Department of Shintō in the old palace.

³⁶ Nintoku ruled at the Kōzu Palace in Naniwa (old name for the Osaka area). The characters for Kōzu can be read “Takatsu” here to better match the first phrase (takaki ya ni) of the original poem quoted in the following passage.

³⁷ This poem ascribed to Nintoku is found in the Shin kokin wakashū (New Collection of Poems from Ancient and Modern Times, commonly abbreviated as Shin kokinshū) the anthology, commissioned to continue the Kokinshū and presented to the emperor in 1205 at the three-hundredth anniversary of the Kokinshū. However, the style of the poem suggests a much later date than Nintoku's reign. Seeing his subjects suffering from poverty, Nintoku is said to have suspended taxes for three years. The poem was thought to express his happiness when his subjects' began to recover from poverty. The use of honorifics in the passage preceding the poem (eiryo ni kaketatematsuru, or “presented to the Emperor for his imperial consideration”), suggests that the author of the Hinin Taiheiki considers the poem to have been written by a vassal.

³⁸ Cloth cheek covers were worn by peasants, street entertainers, and thieves; they replace warrior helmets here. Bowing nine times was a ritual gesture of the highest respect used for the emperor or a high-ranking priest.

³⁹ Ikutama (also Ikudama) is the name of a shrine in Ikutama in the Tennōji area of Osaka. Valiant warriors of the past trembled with excitement; paupers shook their bodies from nervous habit.

⁴⁰ A parody of a typical description of brilliantly attired warriors in warrior tales. The armor is dōmaru, designed for foot soldiers and characterized by a continuous sheath-like cuirass that is wrapped around the body of the wearer and fastened at the right side. It was particularly popular in the Muromachi period. “With long hems” (kusazurinaga ni) means wearing armor with longer kusazui (corded hip and thigh guard hung from the torso) of seven or six, instead of five, tiers. The expression is especially associated with ōyoroi, loosely-fitting armor for mounted archers of earlier times.

⁴¹ Kizu in the Kyoto area is a port town on the Kizu River. Imamiya is named after the Imamiya Shrine originally established in the Heian period as a place to pray for safety from an epidemic that spread through the Kyoto area in 993. Abeno, an area in southern Osaka, is said to be the site of the death of court noble Kitabatake Akiie (1318-1338), a hero in the Taiheiki.

⁴² Enami is an old name for an area in Osaka. Kyōbashi is a bridge across the Neya River in Osaka; it is also a bridge in Fushimi in Kyoto over a tributary of the Uji River. Amijima (literally, “fish net island,” because fishermen used to dry their nets there) is a town where the Yodo and Neya Rivers join. Later it became famous for dramatist Chikamatsu Monzaemon's Bunraku puppet play Love Suicides at Amijima (Shinjūten no Amijima, first performed in 1721).

⁴³ Kitano Tenmangū Shrine is in the Kitano area of Kyoto. Dōshima in Osaka was an entertainment district in the Edo period. Fukushima, also in Osaka, is on the lower reaches of the Yodo River.

⁴⁴ Chōja (an elder) here means the female owner of a pleasure house, as an extension of its more conventional meaning of the mistress of an inn along an official travel route.

⁴⁵ Yoshiwara is the name of two places in Osaka: one a cemetery in the northern part of the city near Tenman, and the other a neighborhood in southeastern Osaka. However, the name is certainly used here to recall the most famous Yoshiwara, the pleasure quarter of the city of Edo, which was established in 1615 (Moto Yoshiwara) and moved to Asakusa in 1656 (Shin Yoshiwara) after a fire.

⁴⁶ Ikasuri (also pronounced Zama) is a shrine in Higashi-ku, Osaka. The Tenmangū Shrine Festival, traditionally held on the twenty-fifth day of the sixth month, now on July 25, is one of the biggest festivals in Japan.

⁴⁷ One ri is a distance of nearly four kilometers. The phrase that references the long lifespans of the crane and tortoise signifies a felicitous world.

⁴⁸ A familiar Chinese saying quoted in the Taiheiki in the lengthy note on the war between Wu and Yüeh (Book 4) and in Ashikaga Takauji's letter to Go-Daigo accusing Nitta Yoshisada (Book 14).

⁴⁹ Chikurinji, once in Nanba, is now in Katsuyama.

⁵⁰ In Japanese: Senba, Nagabori, Uchimachi, and Nagamachi.

⁵¹ Five begging bowls is a play on the helmet with a five-tiered neck protector (gomai kabuto or gomai shikoro) that extended from the head protector (hachi). Great armor (ōyoroi) is medieval armor worn in mounted battles with its skirt divided into four flaps; around the Muromachi period, simpler forms of armor, dōmaru or haramaki, better suited for fighting on foot, grew more popular. Detailed descriptions of helmets and armor such as this are important ingredients in tales of battle scenes.

⁵² “Unlacquered chopsticks used for dyed teeth” (hazome no zōbashi) puns on battle arrows with dyed arrow-feather“ (hazome no soya).

⁵³ Iwakuni, on the eastern end of today's Yamaguchi Prefecture, was a famous producer of paper made of kōzo (a kind of mulberry). Thick paper made by gluing several layers of Iwakuni paper was used for book covers.

⁵⁴ Taiheiki-like exaggeration of numbers.

⁵⁵ Takahara had a fifth kaito, although without a chief.

⁵⁶ They raise the beggars' cry instead of the warriors' war cry. (A pun on “war cry” and “cry for a meal”)

⁵⁷ Sun Ch'en (Japanese Son Shin), an ancient Chinese sage, wove mats for a living but excelled at poetry and calligraphy. All he had for bedding, even in winter, was a pile of straw, which he spread in the evening and put away in the morning.

⁵⁸ Bareman Saburō Dirtskin's strategies echo those that Kusunoki Masashige employed in battles at Akasaka and Chihaya described in the Taiheiki, Books 3 and 7.

⁵⁹ Thorny barricades (sakamogi), made of uprooted trees and bushes, is a standard barricade mentioned in the Taiheiki and other tales of war.

⁶⁰ In the Taiheiki, the Kusunoki troops threw boiling water (the Battle of Akasaka), torches (the Battle of Chihaya), and big rocks and lumber (both battles). The torches were thrown at ladders that the Bakufu's eastern troops used to climb the walls of the Chihaya castle after drenching them with oil.

⁶¹ A warrior tales cliché.

⁶² The leather-soled sandals recall leather-reinforced shields in the Taiheiki, Book 3. At the Battle of Akasaka, Kusunoki Masashige prepared a hanging wall outside the regular wall of the castle. When Eastern warriors began climbing the outside wall, Kusunoki warriors let it fall and then threw big rocks and lumber. The enemy warriors tumbled down the slope; hundreds died. Their leaders concluded that this was because the warriors, eager to attack, were not prepared properly with shields and weapons. So each warrior carried a sheaf reinforced with hard leather.

⁶³ The paupers prepared slippery squash pulp just as the Kusunoki troops in the Taiheiki prepared long-handled ladles full of boiling water to shock the Eastern warriors.

⁶⁴ Sushi originally meant pickled fish. Pressed sushi, an Osaka specialty prepared by closing a lid tightly on salted fish placed over vinegared rice and packed in a box, became popular in the Edo period.

⁶⁵ The Heike were routed by Yoshitsune's 1185 surprise attack at Yashima in a northern area of Takamatsu in Kagawa. The Battle of Kurikara Valley in Tonami, Toyama was led by Yoshinaka in 1183.

⁶⁶ Saimei. Here chōri refers to the liaison between temple and government. After the battle, Saimei was arrested and beheaded.

⁶⁷ Temple in the Tennōji District of Osaka.

⁶⁸ Shōman, or Shōman'in, is a separate monastery of Tennōji Temple, where many actors and women working in the pleasure quarters worshipped. Kōshindō is a hall that enshrines the god of Kōshin; here probably the one in Tennōji district of Osaka.

⁶⁹ Shinyashiki a pleasure quarter that included Sonezaki and Dōjima.

⁷⁰ Ryū Hakurin in Japanese. Yüan dynasty warrior who brought down the previous ruler and became commander-in-chief of the military.

⁷¹ Kontaiji, or Jubusen Kontaiji in full, is a Shingon Buddhist sect temple in Kyoto.

⁷² Yao, a legendary Chinese emperor, invited Hsü Yu, a pure-hearted man, to be his successor. Saying that he had heard an unclean thing, Hsü Yu washed his ears in a river and hid in the mountains.

⁷³ This description of the beggar warrior Sekizoronosuke contains references to sekizoro, Edo-period street performers who, in twos and threes, went around in the twelfth month begging for rice and money. They wore hats decorated with ferns and red or white clothes around their faces, with only their eyes showing. They chanted, “Sekizoro gozareya, hah! sekizoro medetai” (This is the season, come forward and give, this is the season, blessings). “A helmet of ferns hanging long over the shoulders” parodies the ample neck plates of a helmet. sekizoro performers wore urajiro or yamagusa ferns commonly used for New Year decorations on their heads. Yuzuriha, “give-away leaves,” is the name of a tree so called because old leaves give way to new leaves in a conspicuous manner. While sekizoro performers wore white cheek covers, others wore red. See Kyōto Burakushi Kenkyūjo, ed., Chusei no minshū to geinō (People and Entertainment in the Medieval Period) (Kyoto: Aunsha, 1989), 116-17.

⁷⁴ The twelfth month.

⁷⁵ “Fukufuku taitai (or, in another reading, daidai), sah sah gozareya gozare,” a variant of the sekizoro chant.

⁷⁶ “Red hair” here is shaguma, which is yak or white bear tail dyed red for ornamental or other purposes, or hair that resembles it.

⁷⁷ The name Tobisonuke carries the image of a kite, the bird that snatches things and flies away, as in the saying, “to have fried tofu snatched by a kite.” Another association is tobi no mono (fireman). Edo firemen worked with tobiguchi, a hook with a long handle that resembled a kite's beak.

⁷⁸ Standard phrase in tales of war.

⁷⁹ Policemen used hard wooden sticks about six-feet long.

⁸⁰ The licensed beggars wore tablets to identify themselves to the authorities. Here a play on kasajirushi, or cloth badges in the shape of miniature flags, worn by warriors over their helmets to identify their side in battle. These badges often appear as crucial plot mechanisms in such classic warrior tales as the Taiheiki.

⁸¹ The name Toki suggests the charity food served at temples rather than the regular morning meal for priests.

⁸² The following is a traditional michiyuki (travel) scene in which puns are made using the names of various places.

⁸³ Pun on mi no ue (condition) and Uederamachi (Upper Temple District).

⁸⁴ A beggar either lives in a small hut or carries rush matting for shelter. These four lines make use of the vocabulary of pining (longing), houses, roof-tile making, and the Buddhist parable of the burning house in order to lead up to the place name “Pine House District.”

⁸⁵ The three evils are of the body, mouth, and mind.

⁸⁶ Buddhas and bodhisattvas compassionately soften their light (i.e. to conceal their glory) and mingle among living things on Earth in order to bring spiritual salvation.

⁸⁷ Like Hades in Greek mythology, Enma is both the judge of the dead and the guardian king of the netherworld.

⁸⁸ Of a warrior family.

⁸⁹ Red hair (akagashira) is dry, brownish hair, from exposure to the sun, unkempt and not treated with hair oil. Akagashira (red hair) and akagari (calluses) resonate.

⁹⁰ Pun on hanami (flower viewing) and shirami (lice).

⁹¹ Karakushi (Chinese or Korean comb) is an imported ornamental ivory comb or an imitation thereof. Play on the phrases for “being barred at a barrier house” and “lice being combed out of the hair.”

⁹² The white road between two rivers (niga byakudō) means the narrow path to enlightenment between the rivers of water and fire, or between greed and anger.

⁹³ The surname Gateway is a reference to begging at the entrance of houses.

⁹⁴ These bandits are nobushi, literally “field-lying warriors.” Yamada, Saidera, Suita, Katayama, Harada, Tarumi, and Sanbōji are neighborhoods in the area of Suita to the north of Osaka, north of the Kanzaki River and south of the great western road. At that time, this area was rural and distant from the city.

⁹⁵ Late sixteenth-century water forces used hōroku, round bullets made of sulfur, coal, rosin, and other materials. Pun on hōraku, a flat earthen pan used for roasting peas, rice, and salt.

⁹⁶ These areas also are to the north of the city within the large bend of the Yodo River and north of Tenman.

⁹⁷ Yakuharai, an exorcist for outcastes, who, on New Year's Eve and other occasions, went through the streets offering prayers of good fortune and charms against calamities.

⁹⁸ Echoes a poem by Saigyō: “Akishino ya toyama no sato ya shigururan Idoma no take ni kumo no kakareru” (A late autumn shower must be falling over the mountain villages in Akishino, for clouds hang over the peak of Mount Ikoma). Shin kokin wakashū, poem 585. Akishino is a place in Nara. See Tanaka Yutaka and Akase Shingo, eds., Shin kokin wakashū (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1992).

⁹⁹ Unlike genteel women who hesitated to walk on mossy and grassy paths.

¹⁰⁰ Pun on makura o kawasu (to exchange or share pillows) and Kawashima (river islet).

¹⁰¹ Pun on kata-waguruma (single wheel), Kuruma Gozen (Lady Wheel), and katawa (single wheel, meaning physically disabled).

¹⁰² Implying that she will soon be with her husband in the other world.

¹⁰³ Izari (sidling, or a “cripple”) is an expression that is also used when a boat advances slowly in the shallows, its bottom grazing the riverbed. Thus it ironically echoes the word uki (floating) in uki sumai (bitter abode).

¹⁰⁴ Ōe no saka, or correctly Oinosaka (“the slope of old age”), is a pass to the north of Ōeyama mountain in Kyoto.

¹⁰⁵ The beggars' versions of warriors' helmets with hoe-shaped crests (kuwagata).

¹⁰⁶ Chōri nakama, translated here as “chiefs and fellows.” The organized hinin inōsaka were called nakama, or, in full, shikasho nakama, or kaito nakama. Shikasho denotes the people of the four kaito, i.e. the beggars.

¹⁰⁷ Kōsekikō and Chō Shibō in Japanese. Huang Shih-kung was a recluse during the Ch'in Dynasty. Chang Tzu Fang, better known as Chang Liang (in Japanese: Chō Ryō), was one of the three heroes who helped found the Han dynasty.

¹⁰⁸ In a well-known passage in Book 7 of the Taiheiki, the Hōjō troops, tired of the long siege of the Chihaya Castle, whiled away their time by engaging in such refined activities as writing linked verses, playing games of go, tea tasting, and poetry competitions.

¹⁰⁹ Collecting waste rice paper and scrap cloth was one way for Osaka hinin to make a living. They dried and recycled what they picked up.

¹¹⁰ There was a belief that all the native gods assembled at Izumo in western Japan in the tenth month of the year. The literary name for this month is Kannazuki, or, “the godless month.”

¹¹¹ The Tenwa Era (1681-84).

¹¹² The episode of Dōgan (“Buddhist Vow”) is reminiscent of an episode in Taiheiki, Chapter 35, titled “The Tale of the Kitano Vigil.” In this episode, the priest Raii spends a night at Kitano Shrine and overhears the conversation among three men: a recluse around age sixty, who had been a former warrior, speaking with a Kantō accent; a pale, retired court scholar; and a lean and learned monk. The recluse laments the corruption in the warrior world. The courtier points out that the aristocracy is also corrupt because there are no sincere vassals who reprimand the emperor. The monk comments that neither warriors nor courtiers are to blame for the disorder under heaven but that it is instead a matter of cause and effect. The three laugh aloud and leave since it is already dawn. Raii, too, leaves.

¹¹³ “A small hermit hides in mountain groves; a great hermit in the imperial court and market places” (attributed to fourth-century poet Wang K'ang-chü. See Watson, The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 175.

¹¹⁴ Atago Gongen Shrine atop Mount Atago of Kyoto. Visiting the shrine on the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month was believed to be as effective as one thousand visits on ordinary days.

¹¹⁵ Cf. Poem 415, “Yomosugara tataku kuina wa ama no to wo akete nochi koso oto sezarikere” (Water rail that called all night long makes no sound now that heaven's door is open), attributed to Minamoto no Yoriie in the sixth imperial poetic anthology, The Collection of Verbal Flowers (Shika wakashū, ca. 1050).

¹¹⁶ Odare are horizontal boards to hide edges of roof boards or eaves.

¹¹⁷ Fuwa barrier house is remembered especially in Fujiwara no Yoshitsune's poem: “Hito sumanu Fuwa no sekiya no itabisashi arenishi nochi wa tada aki no kaze” (Wooden eaves of an uninhabited barrier guard's house, after it has gone to decay, the only thing here is the autumn wind), Shin kokin wakashū, poem 1599 (Quoted in, for example, Theodore de Bary, Eastern Canons (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 333.

¹¹⁸ The roof is makeshift, made of boards about one foot by eight inches wide held in place with rocks and other weights.

¹¹⁹ Three types of entertainers: a dragon mask drummer (who visited houses in Osaka, Edo, and other places from the second day of the first month till the beginning of the second month), a Daitoku (god of wealth and happiness) dancer, and a Noh performer. The Noh performer's full hair, as opposed to a topknot and a shaven forehead, is a reference to the hairstyle of the discriminated class. Sashi is a chanted passage in a Noh play. A lead or a support character's sashi often occurs at the beginning of the play.

¹²⁰ A chanted passage in Noh plays.

¹²¹ A bamboo whisk is used to stir powdered tea. Tenmoku refers to porcelain tea bowls made in the T'ien-mu mountain area of China; tea bowls in general.

¹²² The Seven Gods of Fortune are Daikoku, Ebisu, Bishamonten, Benzaiten, Fukurokuju, Jurōjin, and Hotei.

¹²³ Daikoku wears a hunting robe and a cloth hat, carries a big bag and a wooden treasure hammer, and stands or sits on bags of rice.

¹²⁴ Kanze is one of the main schools of the Noh theater, derived from the Yūzaki Troupe founded by Kan'ami (1333-84).

¹²⁵ The Chinese character for heaven can be broken down into radicals meaning “two” and “person,” evoking the phrase “two people in harmony.”

¹²⁶ An idiom, from a Chinese saying, for peace throughout the land: “In peaceful times, the wind blows once every five days causing a branch to break, and the rain falls every ten days without causing a lump of earth to slide.”

¹²⁷ Buddhism stipulates three kinds of torment (or the Three Heats) for snakes and dragons: to be burned with hot winds and hot sands, to be deprived of dwellings in evil winds, and to be devoured by a monstrous bird.

¹²⁸ This echoes an episode in the recluse's story in “The Vigil at Kitano” in the Taiheiki. A holy priest, following his sudden death, visits hell for thirteen days and sees Go-Daigo suffering torture because of five sins he committed when alive. Chapter 20 of the Taiheiki introduces a traveling monk who visits hell. At dusk he does not know where to stay. A mountain ascetic appears and offers to take him to a lodging. There, the priest witnesses the hellish torture of Yūki Munehiro Dōchū. The mountain monk tells the priest that Yūki's wife and children should copy sutras to rescue Yūki. The gong of a village temple is borne on the wind through the pines, and everything disappears. Only the priest remains sitting, lost, on the dewy grass in a field.

¹²⁹ Gufutoku-ku, the torture of seeking without attaining, is one of the eight tortures in Buddhism.

¹³⁰ According to Buddhism, phenomena at the end of the world. The Five Filths are (1) natural disasters and pestilences; (2) human beings having evil thoughts; (3) human beings living short lives; (4) raging frustrations; and (5) lowering of standards that drive human beings to evil deeds. The Three Poisons are the three basic evils that human beings must conquer: greed, anger, and ignorance.

¹³¹ The demon official is Kushōjin, twin gods based on Indian myths. Starting from the day a person is born, they are perched on his shoulders; one records his good deeds and the other his bad deeds. After the person dies, these records are used in inspection at the office of Enma. In other accounts, Kushōjin is simply an inquisitor and recorder seated by Enma. In the cosmology of medieval Japanese Buddhism, hungry ghosts (gaki) are beings condemned to an existence of insatiable hunger. With distended bellies and needle-thin throats, they wander the earth unseen by most people.

¹³² Shabby world (shaba in Japanese, sahā in Sanskrit): this Buddhist term in common parlance has come to mean “the human world where sufferings abound.”

¹³³ Nachi Waterfalls are in Nachi Katsuura, Wakayama; Mino'o Waterfalls are in Mino'o City, Osaka.

¹³⁴ 1 sun 8 bu is about 5.5 centimeters. The appearance of rice with such grains is reported in the Procedures of the Engi Era (Engishiki)—a compilation of rules and regulations completed in 927—where it is said that, as a result of the spiritual (auspicious) dreams of Emperor Sujin, the deity of seeds, rice with grains 1 sun 8 bu long was harvested.

¹³⁵ The word kabura (round radish) also means whistling arrows. Traditionally, a warrior carried regular arrows on his back in a quiver with two extra arrows on top. These were whistling arrows for signaling the beginning of a battle or scaring off evil spirits.

¹³⁶ Embroidered brocade (tsuzure, short for tsuzurenishiki), which commoners were forbidden to wear, was a sarcastic name for beggars' tattered clothing; tsuzure also means a patch-cloth garment or tattered cloth. The high-quality tissue is Nobe (short for Nobegami), tissue paper slightly smaller than 11 by 8.5 inches produced in Yoshino in Yamato, used especially in the pleasure quarters.

¹³⁷ Manzai, or senzumanzi, is a New Year's song and dance act that celebrates longevity.