Note 28 — A LETTER FROM JAPAN
Reading edition
Footnote 28:
(return)
The Japanese say of a person greatly emaciated by sickness, miru-kagé mo naki: "Even a visible shadow of him is not!"—Another rendering is made possible by the fact that the same expression is used in the sense of "unfit to be seen,"—"though the face of the person afflicted with this ghostly sickness is unfit to be seen, yet by reason of her secret longing [for another man] there are now two of her faces to be seen." The phrase omoi no hoka, in the fourth line, means "contrary to expectation;" but it is ingeniously made to suggest also the idea of secret longing.