Posted by Hans Olof Johansson (217.209.153.207) on September 19, 2004 at 14:14:23:
In Reply to: Re: Unknown Yoshitoshi series title posted by Noel Chiappa on September 18, 2004 at 15:50:42:
Noel and Andrew,
The character above is listed in Koop & Inada: "Japanese Names and How to Read Them" with this explanation:
"BAI, ME; ME. uru ('to sell'); -uri ('a seller of...')"
In K Wadagaki's "A New Japanese-English Dictionary Based on the Current Japanese Literature" (Tokyo 1892) this was still the standard character for 'uru' ('sell').
The title of the series can apparently be transcribed as "Kokon hime kagami" with any of the character combinations, and my guess would be that the meaning of 'hime' is really 'noblemen's daughters' or 'princesses', though Yoshitoshi punningly has used other characters for the word.
By the way, the only reference to the series that I have found on the Internet is
http://www.t3.rim.or.jp/~yoshimi-/fukiya/eat0/eat071.html
Best regards,
Hans Olof