[1] Asiatic Quarterly Review, October 1894.
[2] "The samisen, or 'three strings,' now the favourite instrument of the singing-girls and of the lower classes generally, seems to have been introduced from Manila as recently as the year 1700."—Things Japanese, by B. H. Chamberlain.
[3] The liver, both of man and animal, was supposed to have remarkable medicinal properties. It frequently occurs in Japanese legends, but the idea was probably borrowed from the strangest pharmacopœia in the world, that of the Chinese.
[CHAPTER XXI: THUNDER]
"The earth is full of saltpetre and sulphur, which rise in the form of mist, and, uniting in the sky, become a vapour that possesses the properties of gunpowder. When this nears the intense heat of the sun it explodes, like a natural gas; and the terrible sound is heard by all the world. The shock, striking animals and birds wandering in the clouds, hurls them to the ground. Therefore thunder, and lightning, and the creatures that tumble from the clouds during a storm, are not one and the same thing."
"Shin-rai-ki" (Record of Thunder).