Page:A History of Japanese Literature (Aston).djvu/325

Rh noticed, and from subsequent works with the same or similar titles.

An even more popular work was the Ōka Seidan, which purports to be a collection of causes célèbres tried by a judge named Ōka Echizen no Kami, famous for his impartiality and acumen. He was Machibugiō or civil governor of Yedo, a post which carried with it high judicial powers, under the Shōgun Yoshimune, in the early part of the eighteenth century.

The Ōka Seidan consists of forty-three stories, some of which are founded on fact, though the hand of the romancist is readily distinguishable in all. It may be cordially recommended to European students for its simple, unpretentious style, which is entirely free from the irritating tricks of the writers of superfine Japanese.

The most interesting of the stories related in this bulky volume is the first. It is an account of an attempt by a scoundrelly young Buddhist priest, named Tenichi Bō, to pass himself off on the Shōgun as a son of his by a woman whom he had known in his youth. In order to carry out this design, he and his accomplices commit some forty murders and other crimes. By means which recall the devices of a famous claimant of our own day, they persuade the merchants of Ōsaka and Kiōto to advance them large sums of money wherewith to furnish Tenichi Bō with an outfit suitable to his supposed station. He then proceeds to Yedo with a train of several hundred followers, and takes up his residence there in a handsome yashiki, built specially for his reception from the funds supplied by his deluded adherents. The Shōgun is strongly inclined to recognise him; but Judge Ōka, at the imminent risk of receiving an invitation to commit