[Footnote 83: Before proceeding with the story, it is necessary for the reader to peruse the following note: In Japan there existed, and still more or less exists, a certain superstition which is entertained, that the spirits of the dead have the power of inflicting injury on mankind; for instance, a woman when slighted or deserted, dies, her spirit often works evil on the man who forsook her, or on her rival. This is the spirit of the dead. There is also another belief that the spirits of the living have sometimes the same power, but in this case it only takes place when one is fiercely jealous. When this spirit works upon the rival, the owner of the spirit is not aware of it; but she herself becomes more gloomy, as if she had, as it were, lost her own spirit. These spirits can be exorcised, and the act is performed by a certain sect of priests; but the living one is considered far more difficult to exorcise than the other, because it is imagined that the dead spirit can be easily "laid," or driven back to the tomb, while the living one, being still in its present state, cannot be settled so easily. The method of exorcism is as follows: Certain spells are used on the sufferer, and certain religious addresses are read from the Buddhist bibles, and then the sufferer is made to speak out all his subjects of complaint; but it is supposed not to be the man himself who speaks and tells these causes of complaint, but the spirit of which he is possessed. This process is sometimes performed on a third party; in that case the priest temporarily transmits the spirit from the sufferer to the substitute and makes it speak with his mouth. When he has told all the causes of his complaint and wrongs, the priest sometimes argues with him, sometimes chides, sometimes soothes, and sometimes threatens, and at last says to the spirit, "If you do not go out quietly, I will confine you by my sacred power." By such means the spirit is exorcised; the process resembles mesmerism in some points, but of course has no sensible foundation. In other cases the spirits of those who have either recently, or even years before, met with cruel wrongs or death, may in their wanderings seize upon some person in the vicinity, though totally unconnected with the crime done upon them, and may cause them suffering, or even spirits, who from any cause, are unable to obtain rest, may do the same thing.] [Footnote 84: In the ceremony of exorcism a sacred perfume is burnt, and it was this scent which the Lady of Rokjio perceived in her garment because her spirit was supposed to go to and fro between herself and Lady Aoi, and to bring with it the smell of this perfume.] [Footnote 85: A kind of pink; some translate it Gentian.] [Footnote 86: Here the flower is compared to the child, and autumn to the mother.]