Page:Japanese Literature (Keene).pdf/103

Rh “The man pondered how he might safely escape. Finally he made up his mind and gouged out the giant’s eye with his dagger. The giant let out a great cry and ran wildly about in his rage. He groped around for the man, who was, however, lying flat on the floor of the cave. The giant, for all his ferocity, could not find the man because of his blindness. Then he opened the entrance to the cave a little and drove out the animals. One by one he let them out, apparently resolved thus to catch and kill the man. The man was trapped, but he quickly caught hold under the belly of a huge boar. The giant let the animal out, not realizing the trick that had been played on him. The man was thus able to escape to his ship, which at once set sail.”

It is interesting to speculate how this bit of the Odyssey happened to reach the ears of a traveller to Nagasaki in 1774. Perhaps it was a final remnant of the material which had been used for the Yuriwaka stories, or perhaps it came more directly from one of the Dutch traders. It was in any case the type of European literature most likely to interest the Japanese; one of the first translations of a work of European belles-lettres was the Record of Wanderings “written by an Englishman, Robinson Crusoe”.

For the most part, however, the enthusiasts for European learning in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries confined themselves to books of science and general information, if only because a Dutch novel or play would have been far too difficult for any but the most skilful interpreters, while a Dutch mathematical book could be deciphered by anyone familiar with the general principles of that science.

From about 1860 there were Japanese translations of European