Page:The International Folk-Lore Congress of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, July, 1893.djvu/355

Rh excellent translations made from the originals by Professor Basil Hall Chamberlain, Mrs. T. H. James, Rev. E. Rothesay Miller, etc. There was also published at Yokohama, in 1874, a brochure entitled "Olden-Time Tales for Little People;" and, at Schenectady, New York, in 1880, with illustrations by Ozawa of Tokyo, a small duodecimo containing thirty-five stories from the wonder-lore of Japan entitled "Japanese Fairy World," by the writer of this paper. Most of the copies of this last publication, by the way, disposed of for cash were sold in England, but the large majority of the copies printed were distributed gratuitously among the libraries throughout the United States.

Yet apart from these well-known popular stories, which afford material for the study of the student, and which in Japan are usually published in the form of tiny booklets, very rough, cheap, and intended almost entirely for little children, there are thousands, possibly tens of thousands more, as yet uncommitted to script or print, found recorded in the local histories and gazetteers, or still floating on the lips of the people. The Japanese, living in an archipelago by themselves thousands of years, and on a soil which in itself is constantly active, owing to the interior forces of the earth, have been busy with imagination and fancy. The earthquake and the volcano are constantly ready to excite even the solid earth to undulation, explosion, or the manifestation of the phenomena that strike terror or pleasure to the senses. Surrounded on every hand by waters that are marvellously rich in many striking forms of animal life, and dwelling on a landscape that is beautiful, rugged and changeable, at times, even to fascination, they have in the forces and phenomena of nature abundant potency of reaction upon their imagination.

Further, they are a mixed people, whose congeners have come from the North, the South and the East. The Malay and Negrito blood from the sub-tropical South; the old Dravidian or Aryan elements, driven up northeastwardly through Asia, and entering Japan through Saghalien; the Highlanders of North Asia coming down through Corea and landing in Southern Japan, with a considerable amount of Chinese and, later, Corean elements blended, make up a remarkable ethnic composite. These various people bringing