Page:A History of Japanese Literature (Aston).djvu/385

Rh smashes everything, and if I humour her it makes her so conceited. The worst of it is that when I lie down to sleep I cannot get that face of hers out of my mind.

Mrs. B. Our hussy Rin is just as bad. She is always putting herself forward, and talking when she is not wanted. So she gets the place to herself, and as soon as she has cleared away the breakfast things she goes upstairs and spends half the day doing her hair. Then, until I tell her to get dinner ready, she is always going out, as she says, to hang out the washing, but really for gossip. There is not a day that she does not excite herself about matters of course, crying and laughing over them, but grudging to take pains with her needful work. She will take up a pail, and with "I am going to fetch water, ma'am," off she goes to the well, and does not get back for a couple of hours. No wonder! When she is not making a fool of herself with all the young men in the row, she joins girls like herself in abusing the masters and mistresses. The other day I wondered what they were talking about, so I slipped behind the outhouse, and there she was praising her last master, &c., &c.

The Ukiyo-toko ("The World's Barber's Shop") is of a similar character. Other works of Samba are the Kokon Hiakunin Baka ("One Hundred Fools Ancient and Modern") and Shijiuhachi Kuse ("The Forty-eight Humours").

His works had a great popularity and have been often imitated.

(?–1831) was the son of a petty official of Suruga. His early life was very unsettled. We hear of his holding small appointments in Yedo and Ōsaka, and his name appears with those of two others on the title-page of a play written for an Ōsaka theatre. He was three times married. On the first two occasions he was received into families as irimuko, that is, son-in-law and heir. In Japan such situations are notoriously