Senzai no rei å 妻ã®é
The spirit of the first wife â the one who was there before. The word is positional rather than emotional: it does not say jealous and it does not say wronged, it identifies her only by sequence. Nor is it a word for a kind of being. The spirit of a first wife is not a species like the kappa or the tengu; it is an occasion on which a known category, the resentful dead, is said to have appeared. Two Buddhist framings were in circulation at once and they put the fault in opposite places â attachment, which blames her for not letting go, and karma, which blames the household for the position she was put in.
Note
- Senzai no Rei: the Wife Who Was There First There was a word for the dead first wife, and a word for what living wives were once permitted to do to a second one. The two sit close together.
Volume
THERE IS NO COLUMN FOR IT
A domain forester keeps two books: one for the timber, one for what comes down the mountain at night. The second book exists because the first has no column for it.