Note 29 — A LETTER FROM JAPAN

Footnote 29:

(return)

There is a curious play on words in the fourth line. The word omoté, meaning "the front," might, in reading, be sounded as omotté, "thinking." The verses therefore might also be thus translated:—"She keeps her real thoughts hidden in the back part of the house, and never allows them to be seen in the front part of the house,—because she is suffering from the 'Shadow-Sickness' [of love]."