Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/127

 vironment is in accurate consonance with the customs of the epoch; but the skill of the raconteur or of his predecessors—for these tales are handed down as family heirlooms—adds a large margin of picturesque, the sensational and the imaginary. Yet there can be no doubt about the service these men render in familiarising the masses with the characters and events of the national history, as well as with the social, administrative, and military canons of by-gone ages. The magnitude of the educational work they accomplish may be inferred from the fact that in Tōkyō alone they number over three hundred, divided into twelve schools, each tracing its origin to some celebrated expert, the originator of a special style, and that their repertoire of subjects includes eight sections,—accounts of commotions raised by treacherous clansmen in feudal families, accounts of momentous local interferences by the central administration, accounts of vendettas, accounts of famous judicial decisions, biographies of renowned heroes, lives of redressers of popular wrongs, journalistic records, and critical resumes of contemporary events.

A rival or colleague of the koshaku-shi is the "talker" (hanashi-ka), or "fugitive-words-man" (rakugo-ka), who differs from the raconteur only in the lighter character of the subjects he chooses and in the prominence that he gives to the humorous side of his performance. The founder