Diaries of Court Ladies
her abundant hair would be better tied up. There is great impropriety in writing about her at all, so I will stop here.
The general ceremonies were the same as the other day. The gifts to the courtiers were bestowed from within the misu. The women's dresses and the Queen's dress [perhaps from the Queen's wardrobe] were added to them. The chief of the King's secretaries and court nobles received them, approaching the misu.
His Majesty's gifts were uchigi, and kimonos, and rolls of silk in the usual court fashion.[1] The gifts to Tachibana-no-Sanmi [who offered the breast to the young Prince for the first time] were a set of women's clothes and rolls of brocade, a silver clothes chest, and wrappings for clothes [which perhaps were white]. I have heard that something wrapped up was added also, though I could not see it in detail.
On the eighth day all changed their dress [which had been white, the colour of purification]. On the ninth evening the Vice-Governor[2] of the August Crown Prince's retinue celebrated the birth. The present was put on a white cabinet. The ceremony was quite in the new style. On the silver clothes chest a raised ornament was carved, and the island of Horai[3]
- ↑ This "court fashion" of sending rolls of silk as presents from the Emperor or Empress prevails to-day, one thousand years later.
- ↑ This person was the second son of the Prime Minister; therefore the Queen's brother or half-brother and uncle of the Crown Prince.
- ↑ The island of Horai; Japanese Elysium, a crystal island of eternal youth and felicity, supposed to exist in mid-ocean. A miniature
