IV.  SHINKIR[=O]

The term Shinkir[=o] is used in the meaning of “mirage,” and also as another name for H[=o]rai, the Elf-land of Far Eastern fable.  Various beings in Japanese myth are credited with power to delude mortals by creating a mirage of H[=o]rai.  In old pictures one may see a toad represented in the act of exhaling from its mouth a vapor that shapes the apparition of H[=o]rai.

But the creature especially wont to produce this illusion is the Hamaguri,—­a Japanese mollusk much resembling a clam.  Opening its shell, it sends into the air a purplish misty breath; and that mist takes form and defines, in tints of mother-of-pearl, the luminous vision of H[=o]rai and the palace of the Dragon-King.

    Hamaguri no
  Kuchi aku toki ya,
    Shinkir[=o]! 
  Yo ni shirar[’e] ken
  Tatsu-no-miya-him[’e]!

    [When the hamaguri opens its mouth—­lo!  Shinkir[=o]
    appears!...  Then all can clearly see the Maiden-Princess of
    the Dragon-Palace.]

    Shinkir[=o]—­
  Tatsu no miyako no
    Hinagata[33] wo
  Shio-hi no oki ni
  Misuru hamaguri!

    [Lo! in the offing at ebb-tide, the hamaguri makes visible
    the miniature image of Shinkir[=o]—­the Dragon-Capital!]

[Footnote 33:  Hinagata means especially “a model,” “a miniature copy,” “a drawn plan,” etc.]

V. ROKURO-KUBI

The etymological meaning of Rokuro-Kubi can scarcely be indicated by any English rendering.  The term rokuro is indifferently used to designate many revolving objects—­objects as dissimilar as a pulley, a capstan, a windlass, a turning lathe, and a potter’s wheel.  Such renderings of Rokuro-Kubi as “Whirling-Neck” and “Rotating-Neck” are unsatisfactory;—­for the idea which the term suggests to Japanese fancy is that of a neck which revolves, and lengthens or retracts according to the direction of the revolution....  As for the ghostly meaning of the expression, a Rokuro-Kubi is either (1) a person whose neck lengthens prodigiously during sleep, so that the head can wander about in all directions, seeking what it may devour, or (2) a person able to detach his or her head completely from the body, and to rejoin it to the neck afterwards. (About this last mentioned variety of Rokuro-Kubi there is a curious story in my “Kwaidan,” translated from the Japanese.) In Chinese mythology the being whose neck is so constructed as to allow of the head being completely detached belongs to a special class; but in Japanese folk-tale this distinction is not always maintained.  One of the bad habits attributed to the Rokuro-Kubi is that of drinking the oil in night-lamps.  In Japanese pictures the Rokuro-Kubi is usually depicted as a woman; and old books tell us that a woman might become a Rokuro-Kubi without knowing it,—­much as a somnambulist walks about while asleep, without being aware of the fact....  The following verses about the Rokuro-Kubi have been selected from a group of twenty in the Ky[=o]ka Hyaku-Monogatari:—­