Page:A History of Japanese Literature (Aston).djvu/136

120 proportion, it is believed, have been added by later editors.

The following outlines of a few may give some idea of the general character of this collection:—

A painter named Kawanari has an intimate friend, an architect and engineer called Hida no Takumi. The latter, having built a small square pavilion, invites his friend to enter it. The painter approaches the south door, when by some mechanical contrivance it shuts in his face. When he tries to go in by the west door, it closes and the north door opens. And so on. In revenge for the practical joke thus played on him, Kawanari paints on a screen the picture of a corpse so loathsome and repulsive, that when Hida no Takumi is made to approach it unawares he starts back in horror and rushes out into the garden.

A Buddhist monk, a renowned player of Go, is invited to visit a mysterious lady. With a screen interposed between them, they play a game which ends in the total massacre of the monk's men. The lady is never heard of again, and is presumed to have been a supernatural being.

A professor of magic, by some mistake in his ceremonies, excites the wrath of the infernal demons. They pursue him. He gets off his horse and lets it go home by itself, while he hides among the sheaves in a rice-field by the way. The demons follow the tracks of the horse's feet, and the magician escapes, having learnt from the conversation of his pursuers as they pass his hiding-place how to circumvent them when they renew their attack upon him.

A professor of magic goes to perform a ceremony of purification from evil influences. His little boy, who