Page:Things Japanese (1905).djvu/452

440 or with a little slab of wood kept by him for the purpose. Such a reading is called gundan if the subject be war; otherwise it is kōshaku, which means literally a "disquisition." The hanashi-ka or story-teller proper, deals in love-tales, anecdotes, and imaginary incidents.

The entertainment offered at a yose is generally mixed. There will be war-stories, love-tales, recitations to the accompaniment of the banjo, the same programme being mostly adhered to for a fortnight, and a change being made on the ist and 16th of the month. As the number of such houses in every large city is considerable, hearers may nevertheless find something new every night to listen to, and the higher class of story-tellers themselves may realise what for Japan is a very fair income. For they drive about from one house of entertainment to another, stopping only a quarter of an hour or so at each,—just time to tell one story and earn a dollar or two by it.

Many foreign students of the Japanese language have found the yose their best school; but only two have hitherto thought of going there, not as listeners, but as performers. One is an Englishman named Black, whose command of Japanese is so perfect, and whose plots borrowed from the stores of European fiction prove such agreeable novelties, that the Tōkyō story-tellers have admitted him to their guild. The other—also an English man, of the name of John Pale—is said to sing Japanese songs as well as any native.

 Sun, Moon, and Stars. In the early Japanese mythology the sun is ruled over by a goddess, the glorious Ama-terasu, or "Heaven-Shiner," from whom is descended the Imperial family of Japan. The moon belongs to her brother, the rough and violent god Susa-no-o. According to the later Japanese poets, there grows in the moon a cassia-tree (katsura), whose reddening leaves cause its brighter refulgence in autumn. They also tell us of a great city in the moon (tsuki no miyako), and the 