[Footnote 18: Words of a loving but jealous woman, thus interpreted by my Japanese friend: "The more kind he is, the more his kindness overwhelms me with anxiety lest he be equally tender to other girls who may also fall in love with him."]
_Neither for youth nor age is fixed the life of the body;_ _--Bidding me wait for a time is the word that forever divides._[19]
Rō-shō fujō no Mi dé ari nagara, Jisetsu maté to wa Kiré-kotoba.
Lit.: "Old-young not-fixed-of body being, time-wait to-say, cutting-word." Ro-shō fujō is a Buddhist phrase. The meaning of the song is: "Since all things in this world are uncertain, asking me to wait for our marriage-day means that you do not really love me;--for either of us might die before the time you speak of."]
_Only too well I know that to meet will cause more weeping;_[20] _Yet never to meet at all were sorrow too great to bear._
[Footnote 20: Allusion is made to the Buddhist text, _Shōja hitsu metsu, esha jōri_ ("Whosoever is born must die, and all who meet must as surely part"), and to the religious phrase, _Ai betsu ri ku_ ("Sorrow of parting and pain of separation").]
_Too joyful in union to think, we forget that the smiles of the evening_ _Sometimes themselves become the sources of morning-tears._
Yet, notwithstanding the doctrine of impermanency, we are told in another _dodoitsu_ that--
_He who was never bewitched by the charming smile of a woman,_ _A wooden Buddha is he--a Buddha of bronze or stone!_[21]
[Footnote 21: Much more amusing in the original:--
Adana é-gao ni Mayowanu mono wa Ki-Butsu,--kana-Butsu,-- Ishi-botoké "Charming-smile-by bewildered-not, he-as-for, wood-Buddha, metal-Buddha, stone-Buddha!" The term "Ishi-botoké" especially refers to the stone images of the Buddha placed in cemeteries.--This song is sung in every part of Japan; I have heard it many times in different places.]
And why a Buddha of wood, or bronze, or stone? Because the living Buddha was not so insensible, as we are assured, with jocose irreverence, in the following:--
{ _Lord Buddha's_} _that was_ _or_ _teaching!_ { _upside-down_ }
_And Ragora,[22] son of his loins?--was he forgotten indeed?_
There is an untranslatable pun in the original, which, if written in Romaji, would run thus:--