Page:Insect Literature by Lafcadio Hearn.djvu/384

Rh the period of Bunsei (1818–1829) his business was taken over by a distant relative named Yamasaki Seichirō. To Chūzō's business, Yamasaki joined his own,—that of a toy-merchant. About the same time a law was passed limiting the number of insect-dealers in the municipality to thirty-six. The thirty-six then formed themselves into a guild, called the Oyama-Kō ("Oyama Society"), having for patron the divinity Sekison-sama of the mountain Oyama in Sagami Province. But in business the association was known as the Yedo-Mushi-Kō, or Yedo Insect Company.

It is not until after this consolidation of the trade that we hear of the kirigirisu,—the same musical insect which the poet Kikaku had vainly tried to buy in the city in 1687,—being sold in Yedo. One of the guild known as Mushiya Kojirō ("Kojirō the Insect-Merchant"), who did business in Honjo-ku, returning to the city after a short visit to his native place in Kadzusa, brought back with him a number of kirigirisu, which he sold at a good profit. Although long famous elsewhere, these insects had never before been sold in Yedo.

"When Midzu Echizen-no-Kami," says the chronicle, "became machi-bugyō, (or chief magistrate) 註