your guest-room and perches behind the bamboo screen, the person whom you
most love is coming to see you. That a butterfly may be the spirit of
somebody is not a reason for being afraid of it. Nevertheless there are
times when even butterflies can inspire fear by appearing in prodigious
numbers; and Japanese history records such an event. When Taira-no-Masakado
was secretly preparing for his famous revolt, there appeared in Kyoto so
vast a swarm of butterflies that the people were frightened,-- thinking the
apparition to be a portent of coming evil... Perhaps those butterflies were
supposed to be the spirits of the thousands doomed to perish in battle, and
agitated on the eve of war by some mysterious premonition of death.


However, in Japanese belief, a butterfly may be the soul of a dead person
as well as of a living person. Indeed it is a custom of souls to take
butterfly-shape in order to announce the fact of their final departure from
the body; and for this reason any butterfly which enters a house ought to
be kindly treated.


To this belief, and to queer fancies connected with it, there are many
allusions in popular drama. For example, there is a well-known play called
Tonde-deru-Kocho-no-Kanzashi; or, "The Flying Hairpin of Kocho." Kocho is a
beautiful person who kills herself because of false accusations and cruel
treatment. Her would-be avenger long seeks in vain for the author of the
wrong. But at last the dead woman's hairpin turns into a butterfly, and
serves as a guide to vengeance by hovering above the place where the
villain is hiding.