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tion, Vol. IV, p. 648). We may interpet the obscure meaning of the song as follows:
“Let us courtiers make merry the whole night through! Oh, how fine for us courtiers is the sacred sake drink!”
“What a fine long robe each Courtier wears at the Ceremony of Removing the Court Shrine; it reaches below the knees!”
75. According to Tachibana-Moribe, one of the ablest scholars of the Tokugawa regime, it reads as follows:—
“The Courtiers’ fine long robes, reaching below the knees; how magnificent they look!”
(Vide Tachibana-no-Moribe, The Kagura-Uta-Iriaya. The Moribe Zenshu or Collected Works, Japanese edition, Vol. VII, p. 57).
Another interpretation advanced by Ikebe-no-Mahari for the first song in question is this:
“We Courtiers have enjoyed ourselves very much until late at night, singing, dancing, and gently striking the knees with our hands. O how happy and pleasant it is to-night at the Ceremony of Removing thus the Court Shrine!”
The same author interprets the meaning of the second song as follows:
“What a fine, long robe each Courtier in the suite wears at the Ceremony of the Removing of the Court Shrine! It reaches to the knees. Oh, how splendid is the procession to the Court Shrine!”
(Ikebe-no-Mahari, The Kogoshui-Shinchu, or New Commentary on the Kogoshui, Japanese edition. Vol. VI, p. 22).
