Page:Japanese plays and playfellows (1901).djvu/168

140 avenging devils in hell." Such engaging pictures of a future state are often exhibited at temple fêtes, and serve to stimulate liberality on the part of worshippers. Quite philosophic is the pessimism of.

I translate ukiyo by "this world" : the more scrupulous dictionary renders it by "this fleeting or miserable world, so full of vicissitudes and unsettled." For the "vale of tears" is not a Christian concept only: Mrs. Gummidge was also a Buddhist without knowing it. It is curious that this theological term, with its disparaging connotation, was affixed to the modern popular school of painters, among whom Hokusai is the best known, because they descended from lofty, conventional subjects to the life of workaday folk. The central thought of the poem, however, narrowed to a romantic application, recalls a line by Browning: "Never the time and place, and the loved one altogether." Writers of Dodoitsu have this advantage over versifiers who employ more classical metres, that they are not forced by convention to repeat stereotyped fancies, but are at liberty to invent new ones. The balloon, the camera, the locomotive, may take the place of dragon, stork, and phoenix. This pouring of foreign wine into native bottles produces a quaint blend. A girl thus reproaches her lover with