Filament Translation Notes

She Got Off the Bus at the Peninsula author's note
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Aokigahara is a forest near Mount Fuji in Japan that's (in)famous for being a
place where people go to commit suicide.

The Labyrinth Cat author's note
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Wikipedia has a great article on Battleship Island if you're curious about it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashima_Island

Who art thou?
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The title of this chapter is a reference to the origins of the word "dusk"(黄昏 - tasogare)
in Japanese. It refers to the time of day in the evening where you can't tell
who someone is, and the story plays off of that. The original title is in an older
form of Japanese, hence "Who art thou?" in the English.

Surface Bubbles
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The title for this chapter has a dual meaning. The word, うたかた - utakata, is often used to mean "transient",
"ephemeral", and so on. However, it also means "surface bubbles", and the author makes use
of these meanings in a number of ways.

The Flower-Lined Path Home
----
In this chapter, the author gives clues all throughout hinting at what's going on. The first lines of the first page
talk about a "yearly" trip home. A couple pages later, there's a conversation that mentions it's
obon season, a time where Japanese pay respects to their ancestors and their dead.
The final pages make clear what the hints have been leading up to. The woman calling out to an empty room,
the calendar indicating it's the 15th and the peak of obon, and the incense and her holding her
hands together in prayer all come together to show that the boy is a dead spirit coming for his yearly
visit during obon.

Summer's Sky
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On the third page of this story it makes mention of "shouryou". This is an actual word
in Japanese that means "dead spirit" or "spirit of the deceased", but the author wrote it in hiragana
with emphasis marks, and the dialogue which follows the word indicates that it holds a slightly different
meaning in the world of this story. As such, I left it as is to show that it's the name of something
rather than a concept.

House of Fossils
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The word used to refer to the woman here has the meaning of "kept woman" or "mistress", but also,
due to the kanji used, indicates someone enclosed or surrounded. Thus, while at first the word
is taken at face value and we're told she's a mistress, later on we see that she lives surrounded
by rocks and fossils, playing off the second meaning of the word.

Mar-man
----

I did some searching around, but I couldn't figure out whether or not the tale in this story has
some basis somewhere else. I'm leaning towards it being the author's creation.
As far as I know, mar-man is just an alternate spelling for merman.

Mushishi - Azure Music
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The kanji used for "mushi"(虫) in this chapter is a common kanji used for bugs and the like. This is in contrast
to the kanji used for "mushi"(蟲) in the newer Mushishi series which is an older, less-common variant.
Many of the terms used in this chapter are real terms used in the past. For instance, the kan mushi
is said to be the cause of night crying, convulsions, and other symptoms babies and young children are prone to.
It's an old term from Chinese medicine passed on into Japanese folk customs. I guess the point I'm trying to make
here is that this version of Mushishi seemed to rely on existing concepts and the idea of bugs (as evidenced by the
kanji used, the mention of the rhino beetle early on, and the use of kan mushi) for its base. This differs from
the newer series, which focuses much more on spiritual concepts.