Diaries of Court Ladies
out his fan and the young people laughed at him. The Doctor of Literature, Kurodo Ben-no-Hironari, stood at the foot of the high corridor and read the first book of Sikki [historical records]. Twenty bow-string men twanged the bow-string to scare away evil spirits, they were ten men of the fifth, and ten men of the sixth degree [of rank] arranged in two rows. The same ceremonies of bathing were repeated in the evening. Only the Doctor of Literature was changed. Doctor Munetoki, Governor of Isé, read the Kokyo [book on filial piety], and Takachika read a chapter of Buntei [in the Historical Records of Chinese Kings].
For seven nights every ceremony was performed cloudlessly. Before the Queen in white the styles and colours of other people's dresses appeared in sharp contrast.[1] I felt much dazzled and abashed, and did not present myself in the daytime, so I passed my days in tranquillity and watched persons going up from the eastern side building across the bridge. Those who were permitted to wear the honourable colours[2] put on brocaded karaginu,[3] and also brocaded uchigi. This was the conventionally beautiful dress, not showing individual taste. The elderly ladies who could not wear the honourable colours avoided anything
- ↑ Here occurs an untranslatable sentence. Literally it would seem to be: It seems hair growing in good monochromatic picture. That might mean that the Queen seemed like a beauty in a picture drawn with ink and brush (see some illustrations in this book).
- ↑ Purple and scarlet.
- ↑ Karaginu: a short garment with long sleeves and worn of a different colour from the uchigi. (See frontispiece.)
