frequently to exclaim, "Torikayebaya!" that is, "Oh! if I could only exchange them."[1] All he can do is to have the boy dressed in girl's clothes and treated accordingly, while the girl is brought up as a boy. The results are unsatisfactory from a moral point of view.
The author of the collection of stories entitled Uji Monogatari was a court noble named Minamoto no Takakuni, better known as Uji Dainagon, from his place of residence and rank. He died A.D. 1077, at an advanced age. Being a fat man, and greatly disliking the hot weather, he used to retire for the summer season to Uji, a village not far from Kiōto, on the bank of the river which flows out of Lake Biwa. Here he built a little tea-house on the roadside near his country-seat, where tea was offered to the passers-by. They were then invited to tell stories, which the Dainagon, sitting behind a screen, took down from their mouths. Most of the stories so collected are obviously fictitious; but, true or false, they have a special interest, inasmuch as they present a fuller and livelier picture of the lives and ideas of the middle and lower classes than most other works of this period.
As might be expected from the manner of its compilation, the Uji Monogatari contains a large element of folk-lore. The style is easy and unpretentious. Thirty of the sixty thin volumes of which it consists are assigned to Japanese stories, the remainder containing tales of Chinese or Indian origin. Probably not all of these were collected in the manner above described, and a certain
- ↑ The reader may think that this is a great deal to express by the one word, "Tori-kaye-ba-ya!" It is literally "Take-change-if-oh!" Note the absence of personal pronouns, to the use of which the genius of the Japanese language is averse.
