7Two-year-old child.
8Referring to the Lady of Akashi’s comparatively humble birth.
9Quoting the old song: ‘Your village is so far away that I must go back almost as soon as I come. Yet short as our meetings are perhaps we should be still unhappier without them.’
10Allusion to an old poem.
11The lady was unaware that he had been in love with her mistress and imagined it was of his feelings for herself that Ukon was speaking.
12Each competitor had to improvise a verse before the cup reached him.
13Many puns.Katsura= ‘laurel.’ Also, akatsura-tres was supposed to grow in the moon.
14The ‘next morning’ letter.
15Themogior ‘First Putting On of the Skirt.’
16The two stars, Weaving Lady and Plough Boy, meet only on the seventh day of the seventh month.