I am reading Lafcadio Hearn's "In Ghostly Japan", in which he talks about Japanese "incense parties" or "incense games". He transcribes those as "ko-kwai".
"Ko-kwai" is obviously not a Japanese word by modern standards. I assume "ko" refers to 香, but what could "kwai" refer to? The "ai" I would expect to be 会, but I'm puzzled by the today non-existent "kw". Was the author simply being creative in romanising a word, or did the word "kwai" actually exist in the olden Japan?
deceze
[ Editor ]
Based on further uses of 'kwa' in the book, apparently the word I'm looking for is 香会 kōkai. For some reason the author transcribed か ka as 'kwa'. I wonder if the pronunciation was that different at the time?
ulashima
It actually existed. Before Hepburn and Kunren took place, this kind of Romanization was common. Such nonstandard transliterations can be seen on other things such as Meidi-ya brand honey (Which is 明治屋 in Kanji, めいじや in Hiragana, Meijiya in Hepburn-Romaji)