In this work a pawnbroker lying awake at night hears a noise in his storehouse. He peeps in and sees the pledges deposited there assembled in conclave. Each tells its story.
The Musōbiōye Koshō Monogatari [1] is an allegorical novel in which the hero visits the Land of Childhood, the Land of Lust, the Land of Drunkenness, the Land of Avarice, the Village of Lies, the Village of Sinful Desires, the Village of Grief, and the Village of Pleasure. The idea is borrowed from the older work Wasōbiōye, noticed in a previous chapter. It is very learned, intensely moral, and insufferably tedious. The same criticism will apply to the Shichiya no Kura.
The most famous of Japanese novels is the enormous work entitled Hakkenden. Begun in 1814, it was not finished until 1841. In its original form it consisted of one hundred and six volumes, and even in the modern reprint it forms four thick volumes of nearly three thousand pages.
The Hakkenden ("Story of the Eight Dogs") narrates the adventures and exploits of eight heroes of semi-canine parentage, who represent the eight cardinal virtues. After a perusal of some hundreds of pages of this work I can only express my amazement at its extraordinary popularity in Japan. It is full of physical and moral impossibilities, and, worse still, is often pedantic and wearisome. Yet it was greedily bought up by the public. The wood-engravers came daily for copy, and as soon as a part was ready it was printed off in an
- ↑ This work has been translated into English by L. Mordwin (Yokohama, 1881). An English version of Bakin's Kuma no tayema amayo no tsuki, by Edward Greey, was published in Boston in 1886. A French translation of his Okoma appeared in Paris in 1883.
