HOW THE SUN-GODDESS WAS ENTICED OUT OF HER CAVE.
JAPANESE
FAIRY WORLD.
Stories from the Wonder-lore of Japan.
BY
WILLIAM ELLIOT GRIFFIS,
AUTHOR OF "THE MIKADO'S EMPIRE."
ILLUSTRATED BY OZAWA, OF TOKIO.
LONDON:
TRÜBNER & CO., LUDGATE HILL.
1887.
PREFACE.
The thirty-four stories included within this volumedo not illustrate the bloody, revengeful or licentiouselements, with which Japanese popular, and juvenileliterature is saturated. These have been carefullyavoided.
It is also rather with a view to the artistic, than tothe literary, products of the imagination of Japan, thatthe selection has been made. From my first acquaintance,twelve years ago, with Japanese youth, I becamean eager listener to their folk lore and firesidestories. When later, during a residence of nearlyfour years among the people, my eyes were openedto behold the wondrous fertility of invention, thewealth of literary, historic and classic allusion, ofpun, myth and riddle, of heroic, wonder, and legendarylore in Japanese art, I at once set myself to findthe source of the ideas expressed in bronze and porcelain,on lacquered cabinets, fans, and even crapepaper napkins and tidies. Sometimes I discoveredthe originals of the artist's fancy in books, sometimesonly in the mouths of the people and professionalstory-tellers. Some of these stories I first readon the tattooed limbs and bodies of the native foot-runners,others I first saw in flower-tableaux at thestreet floral shows of Tokio. Within this book the[Pg iv]reader will find translations, condensations of wholebooks, of interminable romances, and a few sketchesby the author embodying Japanese ideas, beliefs andsuperstitions. I have taken no more liberty, I think,with the native originals, than a modern story-tellerof Tokio would himself take, were he talking in anAmerican parlor, instead of at his bamboo-curtainedstand in Yanagi Cho, (Willow Street,) in themikado's capital.
Some of the stories have appeared in English before,but most of them are printed for the first time.A few reappear from The Independent and otherperiodicals.
The illustrations and cover-stamp, though engravedin New York by Mr. Henry W. Troy, were, withone exception, drawn especially for this work, by myartist-friend, Ozawa Nankoku, of Tokio. The pictureof Yorimasa, the Archer, was made for me byone of my students in Tokio.
Hoping that these harmless stories that have tickledthe imagination of Japanese children during untoldgenerations, may amuse the big and little folks ofAmerica, the writer invites his readers, in the languageof the native host as he points to the chopsti