uguisu

Karkowski: Yes, we recorded “uguisu bari no roka” “nightingale sounding floor” in Chion-in temple in Kyoto in January 1998.

Disquiet » Sounding Floor 2000

There are uguisu to be had for one or two yen, but the finely trained, cage-bred singer may command not less than a hundred.

Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan Second Series Lafcadio Hearn 1877

My uguisu is awake at last, and utters his morning prayer.

Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan First Series Lafcadio Hearn 1877

A wild uguisu perches on a cedar by the window, and in a burst of savage sweetness challenges my caged pet to a contest in song; and always though the golden air, from the green twilight of the mountain pines, there purls to me the plaintive, caressing, delicious call of the yamabato:

Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan Second Series Lafcadio Hearn 1877

And the places they most haunt are the loveliest -- high shadowy groves where the uguisu sings in green twilight, above some voiceless shrine with its lamps and its lions of stone so mossed as to seem things born of the soil -- like mushrooms.

Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan First Series Lafcadio Hearn 1877

Wild uguisu also frequently sweeten my summer with their song, and sometimes come very near the house, being attracted, apparently, by the chant of my caged pet.

Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan Second Series Lafcadio Hearn 1877

But the devout followers of Nichiren claim that after death their bodies will remain perfectly flexible; and the dead body of an uguisu, they affirm, likewise never stiffens, for this little bird is of their faith, and passes its life in singing praises unto the Sutra of the Lotus of the Good Law. º14

Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan Second Series Lafcadio Hearn 1877

There dwell wild uguisu, owls, wild doves, too many crows, and a queer bird that makes weird noises at night-long deep sounds of hoo, hoo.

Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan Second Series Lafcadio Hearn 1877

All uguisu have professed Buddhism from time immemorial; all uguisu preach alike to men the excellence of the divine Sutra.

Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan First Series Lafcadio Hearn 1877

All that we see is enchanting, but there is a strange stillness in the groves; rarely does the song of a bird break the silence; indeed, I know but one warbler whose note has any music in it, the _uguisu_, by some enthusiasts called the Japanese nightingale -- at best, a king in the kingdom of the blind.

Tales of Old Japan Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford Redesdale 1876