granted them from the tortures of hell to plot further mischief against their former enemies in this life.
One of the few Japanese authors whose fame has penetrated to Europe is Kiokutei Bakin (1767–1848). In his own country he has no rival. Nine out of ten Japanese if asked to name their greatest novelist would reply immediately "Bakin."
He was born in Yedo, and was the youngest of three sons of a retainer of an official of the Shōgun's Government, named Matsudaira Shinsei. When only eight, Bakin was appointed to attend upon the son of his lord, who was a boy like himself. At the age of thirteen, unable any longer to endure the tyranny of his young master, he ran away from home. His elder brother procured him several other situations, but he had not the patience to remain in any of them. He was also apprenticed to a physician, and became the pupil of a Kangakusha or Chinese scholar, but completed his studies with neither. At this period of his life he was for a short time a public fortune-teller at Kanagawa, close to the treaty port of Yokohama; but having lost all he possessed by a flood, he returned to Yedo. Here he made the acquaintance of the novelist Kiōden, who received him into his house and showed him great kindness. It was while residing with Kiōden that Bakin produced his first novel (1791). Kiōden admired it so much that he exclaimed, "In twenty or thirty years I shall be forgotten." In the title-page of this work Bakin describes himself as Kiōden's pupil. It is not creditable to him that at the height of his fame he tried to destroy all traces of this fact, and with this object bought up as many copies of his early publication as he could find.
Through Kiōden's influence, Bakin obtained a position
