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Rh and customs of the great lupanars which then, as now, formed a prominent feature of the principal cities of Japan. The very titles of some of them are too gross for quotation. The immoral tendency of his works was denounced even in his own day by a hostile critic under the suggestive title Saikaku no Jigoku Meguri ("Saikaku in Hell"), and led to their suppression by the Government. It is only recently that a new edition has been permitted to appear, the reason for this tolerance being perhaps the circumstance that the fugitive humour of fast life in the seventeenth century has become in a great measure unintelligible to modern readers.

Saikaku has written one decent book, a collection of gossipy stories about his fellow-writers of Haikai. It is entitled Saikaku Nagori no Tomo, and was published posthumously in 1699. He died in 1693, in his fifty-second year.

For various reasons it is impossible to give a really characteristic specimen of Saikaku's writings. The following is a story of the Enoch Arden class, with a Japanese ending. It is one of a series of tales woven into a work entitled Fudokoro no Suzuri or "Bosom Ink-slab," a fanciful title for what we might call Notes of Travel (1687). This work is less objectionable than most of his productions:—

"Listening to the cries of the plovers that frequent the Isle of Awaji, one may perceive the sadness of the things of this world.

"Our junk anchored for the night in a harbour called Yashima. A wretched place it was. With what eyes could the poet have regarded it who called it 'the flowery Yashima'? Even though it was spring, there were no cherry-flowers; so, with feelings suited to an