[Footnote 56:  Perhaps the term might be rendered “Shape-changing Jiz[=o].”  The verb bak[’e]ru means to change shape, to undergo metamorphosis, to haunt, and many other supernatural things.]

    Nanig[’e] naki
  Ishi no Jiz[=o] no
    Sugata sa[:e],
  Yo wa osoroshiki
  Mikag[’e] to zo naki.

[Though the stone Jiz[=o] looks as if nothing were the matter with it, they say that at night it assumes an awful aspect (or, “Though this image appears to be a common stone Jiz[=o], they say that at night it becomes an awful Jiz[=o]; of granite."[57])]

[Footnote 57:  The Japanese word for granite is mikag[’e]; and there is also an honorific term mikag[’e], applied to divinities and emperors, which signifies “august aspect,” “sacred presence,” etc....  No literal rendering can suggest the effect, in the fifth line, of the latter reading. Kag[’e] signifies “shadow,” “aspect,” and “power”—­especially occult power; the honorific prefix mi, attached to names and attributes of divinities, may be rendered “august.”]

XII.  UMI-B[=O]ZU

Place a large cuttlefish on a table, body upwards and tentacles downwards—­and you will have before you the grotesque reality that first suggested the fancy of the Umi-B[=o]zu, or Priest of the Sea.  For the great bald body in this position, with the staring eyes below, bears a distorted resemblance to the shaven head of a priest; while the crawling tentacles underneath (which are in some species united by a dark web) suggests the wavering motion of the priest’s upper robe....  The Umi-B[=o]zu figures a good deal in the literature of Japanese goblinry, and in the old-fashioned picture-books.  He rises from the deep in foul weather to seize his prey.

    Ita hito[:e]
  Shita wa Jigoku ni,
    Sumizom[’e] no
  B[=o]zu no umi ni
  D[’e]ru mo ayashina!

[Since there is but the thickness of a single plank (between the voyager and the sea), and underneath is Hell, ’tis indeed a weird thing that a black-robed priest should rise from the sea (or, “’tis surely a marvelous happening that,” etc.![58])]

[Footnote 58:  The puns are too much for me.... Ayashii means “suspicious,” “marvelous,” “supernatural,” “weird,” “doubtful.”—­In the first two lines there is a reference to the Buddhist proverb:  Funa-ita ichi-mai shita wa Jigoku ("under the thickness of a single ship’s-plank is Hell"). (See my Gleanings in Buddha-Fields, p. 206, for another reference to this saying.)]

XIII.  FUDA-H[’E]GASHI[59]