erstand, read in Japan, especially by its youth, for
whom the stirring episodes embodied in the history and historical
romances of these bellicose times seem to have an especial
fascination.

The Tokugawa period, covering the 270 years during which the
Government of the Tycoon was installed in Yeddo, was one during which
literature made great progress in Japan. Those years were a time of
profound peace; the country was cut off from the rest of the world,
thrown in upon itself, and accordingly had ample leisure, and possibly
much inclination, to develop its artistic side, especially in
literature. The study of books was prevalent everywhere, and quite a
band of teachers arose in the land whose mission it was to expound its
ancient literature, and exhume for public edification and delectation
many of the buried literary treasures of the past. These teachers were
not content with mere oral description; they wrote what would now be
termed treatises or commentaries, many of which show great depth of
learning, by way of expounding and explaining the classics of Japan
with a view of bringing them within the ken of the great mass of the
people. This period (the Tokugawa) also had its works of fiction; it
produced many dramas and, I believe, some, if not much, poetry. The
romances of this time are, I am told, written principally for or down
to the level of the common people. The classics of Japan were, and
probably still are, like the classics of Greece and Rome in respect of
the mass of the people of this country, not understood, and most
likely were they, would not be appreciated. And hence in the Tokugawa
period what I may term the popular writer was evolved, and he turned
out, under a _nom-de-plume_ for the most part, books for the lower
orders. These works are now regarded as somewhat vulgar, but they are
in many respects a mirror of the age in which they were written, and
it is doubtful if they are much coarser in style than some of the
novels published in England in the eighteenth century. Vulgarity, it
must be remembered, is largely a matter of opinion, and because either
the Japanese of to-day or the foreigner who has perused, perhaps in a
translation, this fiction of a couple of centuries back, dubs it
according to the opinion of to-day vulgar, it by no means follows that
it was so considered in Japan two hundred years back.

Since the Revolution of 1868 it is doubtful if Japan has produced any
distinctive literature