Note 27 — Rooms of the Yūjo.

Mr. Henry Norman says in the “The Real Japan”:—“There is nearly always a large written and framed scroll in a conspicuous position, exhibiting some scrap of appropriate poetry tersely told in the complicated Chinese characters. One I was shown had the four characters matsu kiku nao sonsu, literally, “Pine chrysanthemum still are,” i.e., the pine and the chrysanthemum always preserve their charm, even in winter when other flowers die, and by implication, “My charms are everlasting, like the pine and the chrysanthemum.”