Page:Insect Literature by Lafcadio Hearn.djvu/370

Rh mushi, and other insects will probably come to the lanterns in great number."

It would also seem that the trade of insect-seller (mushiya) existed in the seventeenth century; for in a diary of that time, known as the Diary of Kikaku, the writer speaks of his disappointment at not finding any insect-dealers in Yedo,—tolerably good evidence that he had met such persons elsewhere. "On the thirteenth day of the sixth month of the fourth year of Teikyō [1687], I went out," he writes, "to look for kirigirisu-sellers. I searched for them in Yotsuya, in Kōjimachi, in Hongō, in Yushima, and in both divisions of Kanda-Sudamachō ; but I found none."

As we shall presently see, the kirigirisu was not sold in Tōkyō until about one hundred and twenty years later.

But long before it became the fashion to keep singing-insects, their music had been celebrated by poets as one of the aesthetic pleasures of the autumn. There are charming references to singing-insects in poetical collections made during the tenth century, 註