7 Two-year-old child.

8 Referring to the Lady of Akashi’s comparatively humble birth.

9 Quoting 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.’

10 Allusion to an old poem.

11 The 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.

12 Each competitor had to improvise a verse before the cup reached him.

13 Many puns. Katsura = ‘laurel.’ Also, a katsura-tres was supposed to grow in the moon.

14 The ‘next morning’ letter.

15 The mogi or ‘First Putting On of the Skirt.’

16 The two stars, Weaving Lady and Plough Boy, meet only on the seventh day of the seventh month.