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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn: vast a swarm of butterflies that the people were frightened,-- thinking the
apparition to be a portent of coming evil... Perhaps those butterflies were
supposed to be the spirits of the thousands doomed to perish in battle, and
agitated on the eve of war by some mysterious premonition of death.
However, in Japanese belief, a butterfly may be the soul of a dead person
as well as of a living person. Indeed it is a custom of souls to take
butterfly-shape in order to announce the fact of their final departure from
the body; and for this reason any butterfly which enters a house ought to
be kindly treated.
To this belief, and to queer fancies connected with it, there are many
allusions in popular drama. For example, there is a well-known play called
Kwaidan | 
