"She believes that to sit down upon the place made warm by the body of
another is to take into one's own life all the sorrow of that other
person,--unless the place be stricken first."
Whereat I sat down without performing the rite; and we both laughed.
"Iné," said Manyemon, "the master takes your sorrows upon him. He
wants "--(I cannot venture to render Manyemon's honorifics)--"to
understand the pain of other people. You need not tear for him, Iné."
[Footnote 1: The posthumous Buddhist name of the person buried is
chiseled upon the tomb or _haka._]
[Footnote 2: "Children without parents, like the seagulls of the
coast. Evening after evening the sleeves are wrung." The word
_chidori--_indiscriminately applied to many kinds of birds,--is here
used for seagull. The cries of the seagull are thought to express
melancholy and desolation: hence the comparison. The long sleeve of the
Japanese robe is used to wipe the eyes as well as to hide the face in
moments of grief. To "wring the sleeve"--that is, to wring the moisture
from a tear-drenched sleeve--is a frequent expression in Japanese
poetry.]