FURISODÉ

In his book of Japanese ghost stories, folk tales, and legends,“In Ghostly Japan,”Lafcadio Hearntells of an incident in a street of small shops selling mainly antiques and old goods. He says,

“Recently, while passing through a little street tenanted chiefly by dealers in old wares, I noticed a furisodé, or long-sleeved robe, of the rich purple tint called murasaki, hanging before one of the shops. It was a robe such as might have been worn by a lady of rank in the time of the Tokugawa. I stopped to look at the five crests upon it; and in the same moment there came to my recollection this legend of a similar robe said to have once caused the destruction of Yedo.”

A “furisodé”is a long-sleeved kimono often worn by unmarried women, indicating they are…