THE FOLK-LORE OF JAPAN.
BY REV. WM. ELLIOT GRIFFIS.
In the old days of Japan's seclusion, when the country was the Thorn Rose Castle of the Pacific Ocean, and herself the sleeping Princess, the wealth of Japanese folk-lore was scarcely dreamed of. The Europeans, both clerical and commercial, who resided or traded in Japan during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, have left in their writings little or no traces of this part of Japan's intellectual wealth. "One may search the voluminous literature of the Jesuit and other missionaries, or the writings of travellers or traders in the various languages of Europe, and not find the heap worth the winnowing, if he be a seeker after folk-lore. Even the later investigators, Kaempfer, Von Siebold, and others, do not seem to have given much attention to this branch of inquiry, apparently, in their minds, so far apart from serious investigation. When, however, the country was thrown open to foreign trade and residence by the genius of American diplomacy, in the persons of Commodore Matthew Perry and Townsend Harris, the seekers after the fruits of the Japanese popular imagination were richly rewarded. The writer's first interest in Japan was excited by several pretty or amusing tales, like those of "The Monkey and the Crab," and "The Kioto and Osaka Frogs," told him by his classmate in college, now the Hon. E. C. Pruyn of Albany, N. Y., who had been with his father, the Hon. Robert H. Pruyn, the American minister in Yedo from 1861 to 1865. When, further, that genuine classic, Mitford's "Tales of Old Japan," was published, the whole English-speaking world was able to enjoy at least a few of the typical specimens of Japanese folklore. Now, there is at the disposal of the student the "Japanese Fairy Tale Series," published by the Kobunsha in Tokyo, numbering about two dozen booklets, and embody-
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