^{page 1 note 1} Hei-an-jō.

^{page 1 note 2} The etymology of ‘yebisu’ is uncertain. The word is often written ‘yemisu’ or ‘yemishi.’ ‘Yebi’ means a prawn, and the name ‘yemishi’ is said to have been bestowed upon the aboriginal (Aino) inhabitants of Japan because their hairy faces gave them some resemblance to the crustacean. ‘Yemi’ also means to laugh, smile or grin. The Japanese member of the Septad of Happiness (Shichi-fuku-jin) is likewise called Yebisu or Hiruko (leech). A full account of the Septad will be found in Puini's, Carlo “I sette Genii della Felicità,” Firenze, Le Monnier, 1872Google Scholar, of which I have given a translation in the Trans. Asiat. Soc. Japan.

^{page 2 note 1} In support of this theory the description of the ‘yebisu’ given in the Nihongi (Annals of Japan, compiled in the eighth century) may be referred to. The Mikado, on appointing his son to command an expedition against them, tells him the folk he has to subdue are suspicious, crafty, revengeful, uncivilized, given to harrying the frontiers and abducting the peasants, dwelling in caves, wearing skins, and fond of drinking blood, while the mountains of the country are full of evil gods and the plains of wicked demons. See Satow, , Ancient Japanese Bituals, Trans. Asiat. Soc. Jap. Aug. 1881Google Scholar.

^{page 2 note 2} The Tokugawa dynasty was founded by Iyeyasu, commonly known as Gongen Sama, that is, The Gongen (Transient Presence—a Buddhist term for country gods, arrogated as mere manifestations of Buddhist deities), and ended with Hitotsubashi (lately deceased), vulgarly called Kei-ki, in 1868. Their administration is usually referred to by Japanese authors as the Bakufu or Curtain Eule, in allusion to the cloth curtain or screen that surrounded the headquarters of a general upon an expedition.

^{page 2 note 3} The Kamo-aoi, Asarum caulescens, Max.

^{page 4 note 1} The name is entirely Chinese. The Japanese language is almost lost in the harsh and stiff Sinico-Japanese jargon that has gradually replaced the noble and harmonious tongue of the early monogatari. What one hears in the streets, and still more what one reads in the literature of contemporary Japan, is neither Japanese nor Chinese, but a degraded mixture of both, akin to the slang of the Limousin student that excited the wrath of Pantagruel. Shiū-ten is , ‘to be turned topsy-turvy,’ ‘lose one's senses through drink.’ Dôji means ‘boy, lad.’ The Buddhists use the term; thus, in the Butsu-zō dzu-i, Collected Pictures of Buddhist Images, in five thin volumes, published in 1690, various Dôji are figured and described. Among them are the eight Dôji of Fudô, probably intended to represent eight qualities or characteristics of Fudô (Achala), the Immovable, i.e.in Righteousness, usually imaged as bearing a cord in one hand wherewith to bind demons, and a sword in the other wherewith to execute justice, while a background of flames symbolizes the god's everlastingness, and the power of the ‘yô’ (yang) or male principle of Nature.

^{page 4 note 2} Akitsu, more probably Akitsu-su-shima, Island of the Autumn dragon-fly shape. Many fanciful names are bestowed upon Japan by native writers. Such are: Ohoyashima, The Great Multitude of Islands; Toyoashihara, The Plain rich in reeds; Midzu-ho no Kuni, The Land of Fair Rice-ears, etc.

^{page 4 note 3} Shôtoku Taishi, the prince-name of the Emperor Yō-mei, horn A.D. 572. His mother conceived him under the influence of Kwan-on. A fervent Buddhist, he greatly favoured the spread of the doctrine, founded many monasteries and temples, and is said to be the author of the earliest Japanese calendar. The great Temple of Tennō-ji in Ōzaka owed its existence to his piety. (See a good account in Messrs. Satow and Hawes' Handbook of Japan, 2nd ed.)

^{page 5 note 1} The luxurious home-life of Kunimasa is depicted in Plate I.

^{page 6 note 1} A jô is ten feet.

^{page 7 note 1} One of the most celebrated figures in the Buddhist traditional lore of Japan. He was born in A.D. 774, his mother having conceived under the influence of a famous Indian saint. Numberless tales are told of his supernatural powers, and especially of his victorious contests with various demons, goblins and monsters. He visited China, and brought back from that country the doctrines of the Yôkachaia school, which became those of the Shingon sect. An expert calligrapbist, he is commonly regarded as the inventor of the hiragana or running-hand syllabary. His priest-name was Kū-kai, a Sinico-Japanese expression signifying ‘space and sea,’ said to mean Heaven and Earth.

^{page 7 note 2} The full names are Watanábe no Tsúna, Sákata no Kíntoki, Úsui no Sadamíteu and Urábe no Súyetáke. They are called the Shi tennô or Four Heaven-Kings, i.e. the four trusty comrades of Yorimitsu, guarding the hero as the four Dêvas guard Mount Meru. In Japanese names the surname precedes the personal one, and is usually the name of some place. Thus, Minamoto no Yoritomo may perhaps be translated The Leal Thane of (the fief of) Minamoto.

^{page 8 note 1} Hachiman, litt. ‘Eight banners,’ is the deified Emperor Ōjin (A.D. 270–311), and is wholly a Buddhist invention. He was the son of the heroic Empress Jingû, who devastated Korea in the third century. The origin of the name is uncertain; a native tradition ascribes it to the circumstance that at his birth four white and four red banners fell from heaven to earth. He is often known as the Yumi-ya, or Bow-and-Arrows God, and was especially venerated by the Samurai under the Bakufu régime.

^{page 9 note 1} The Yamabushi (ubasoku=upāsika) ‘hill-haunters,‘ were wandering aseetie half-priests, commonly, as the name (as often written) indicates, men of Samurai rank, who had forsaken the world. Kaempfer, who appears to have seen or heard a good deal of them, has left a long account of their practices, and accuses them of playing upon the credulity of the people, and of being little better than the mendicant friars of Europe in their later days. They seem to have belonged to the Shingon sect, founded by Dai-nichi Niyorai (Vairo/kana), one of the most powerful and numerous in Japan, and possessing, says Mr. Satow, over 13,000 temples. The founder of the Yamabushi was the famous Yen-no-shôkaku (a condensed account of whom I take from my Fuji Hiyak' kei). Born of a noble family in Yamato, in A.D. 633, he abandoned the world and dwelt for thirty years in a cave on Mount Katsuragi, clothing himself with the leaves of the fuji (Wistaria sinensis) and katsura (Cercidiphyllum japonicum), and living upon the young shoots of the common pine (P. Thunbergii). He passed the time in chanting the liturgies of the god Kujaku. rode upon clouds, and held the mountain spirits in his obedience. (He is often represented compelling them to carry huge boulders to make a bridge for him from his mountain to a neighbouring one.) Notwithstanding his ascetic and solitary life—much more difficult to lead under a Japanese than under an Indian sky—he was banished to Ôshima (Vries Island), whence he walked across the sea to Fuji every night. Afterwards he removed to Mino, and finally sailed away Chinawards on a raft of sods, accompanied by his mother, in a large bowl. A somewhat different account will be found in Messrs. Satow and Hawes' Handbook, 2nd edition. Indeed, most Japanese legends are met with under a variety of forms, and the vast majority of them are the direct inventions of Buddhist priests and obsequious chroniclers.

^{page 12 note 1} This scene is pictured in Plate II.

^{page 12 note 2} The Ikkō shiū (sect) is another and older name for the Shin, founded by the Saint (Shônin) Shinran in the early part of the thirteenth century. This seems to be now, as it was in the days of Nobunaga, the most wealthy and powerful of the Buddhist sects of Japan. It possesses nearly 19,000 temples and monasteries, and to it belong Akamatsu and Bunyiu Nanjio—the latter well known in this country. It worships Amida as the Supreme of all the buddhas and looks to faith and works for salvation. Alone among the sects does it refrain from enjoining the practice of celibacy.

^{page 13 note 1} There are three gods of Sumiyoshi, the Bottom-water, the Mid-water, and the Surface-water Gods of the Sea, the results of Izanagi's ablutions after his visit to the Dark Region (yomi) in pursuit of his wife Izanami. They are sometimes regarded as the tutelary gods of Dai Nippon. A brief account of them will be found in the Handbook. The Nihon-gi (Annals of Japan) and the Ko-ji-ki (Ancient Records) may also be consulted. The latter work has been translated, with an excellent commentary, by Mr. Chamberlain.

^{page 13 note 2} The gongen, a sort of counterfeit Shinto deity, invented by the Buddhists, who as far as possible incorporated the aboriginal deities with their own Pantheon.

^{page 13 note 3} The rencontre of Yorimitsu with the daughter of Hanazono is the subject of Plate III.

^{page 15 note 1} Ongô, Tôho, etc., are Indian names of Buddhist demons and torturers in Hades.

^{page 16 note 1} Oni or Buddhist fiends, with some of the features of Tengu , who are generally represented as two-clawed, winged, long-nosed, harpy-like elfs, goblins, or evil-minded spirits, but not denizens of hell. They are apparently connected with the Garudas of Buddhism. The word is Chinese, meaning heavenhorned, and is said to have originally signified a sort of incarnation of the flash and thunder of a falling meteorite. In Japanese a meteorite is termed Amatsu kitsune, i.e. ‘heaven-fox.’ In the din and dazzle was seen perhaps a struggle between the evil and the good spirits of the air. The long nose, sometimes referred to by Chinese and Japanese authors as ‘attractive,’ was possibly an exaggeration of the high nose not uncommon among the nobler scions of the Mongolian stock.

^{page 17 note 1} The Japanese rarely drink their rice-beer (saké) without the accompaniment of solid food, usually fish. Fish is therefore often termed ‘sakana,’ which originally meant any vegetable food eaten with saké.

^{page 20 note 1} The death of the Dôji is represented in Plate IV.

^{page 21 note 1} The Emperor Ichijô was the sixty-sixth Mikado from Jimmu, and hegan to reign in A.D. 987.

^{page 21 note 1} Bishamon or Tamonten is another deity of the Septad of Happiness. He is Vaiṣravaṇa, one of the four Heaven-kings (Shatur Mahârâja), who stand at the corners of Mount Meru and defend the world from evil influences. Bishamon watches over the northern region. He is usually imaged with a spear in the left hand, fixed firmly in the ground, and a small pagoda in the right containing relics of former Buddhas. Sometimes he stands upon clouds, and his feet are often represented as resting on the shoulders of a woman. Among the Septad he is the one least often invoked. (See Puini, cited above.)

^{page 22 note 1} Dai-roku-ten, the last of the six Dêvalôkas, Paranirmita Vaśavarṭin, where dwells Mâra (Ma-wō), king of the world of lust, Khâmadbâtu the tempter and devil of Buddhism, who breathes into men the evil thoughts that lead to wicked actions.

^{page 22 note 2} An interesting Japanese life of Buddha, translated by Mr. Satow, will be found in the Introduction to the Handbook above cited.

^{page 23 note 1} Often called Raikô in Sinico-Japanese pronunciation of the characters wherewith the name is written.