Note 43 — A LETTER FROM JAPAN

Footnote 43:

(return)

There is more weirdness in this poem than the above rendering suggests. The word ukaman in the fourth line can be rendered as "shall perhaps float," or as "shall perhaps be saved" (in the Buddhist sense of salvation),—as there are two verbs ukami. According to an old superstition, the spirits of the drowned must continue to dwell in the waters until such time as they can lure the living to destruction. When the ghost of any drowned person succeeds in drowning somebody, it may be able to obtain rebirth, and to leave the sea forever. The exclamation of the ghost in this poem really means, "Now perhaps I shall be able to drown somebody." (A very similar superstition is said to exist on the Breton coast.) A common Japanese saying about a child or any person who follows another too closely and persistently is: Kawa de shinda-yūréï no yona tsuré-hoshigaru!—"Wants to follow you everywhere like the ghost of a drowned person."