8vo., 2 vols. pp. (x) 699, dull green cloth, silver lettering and design, gilt top.
(1) Dedication:—
To the Friends
whose kindness alone rendered possible
my sojourn in the Orient,—
to
PAYMASTER MITCHELL McDONALD, U. S. N.
and
BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN, ESQ.
Emeritus Professor of Philology and Japanese in the
Imperial University of Tōkyō
I dedicate these volumes
in token of
Affection and Gratitude.
(V-X) Preface (Extract).
But the rare charm of Japanese life, so different from that of all other lands, is not to be found in its Europeanized circles. It is to be found among the great common people, who represent in Japan, as in all countries, the national virtues, and who still cling to their delightful old customs, their picturesque dresses, their Buddhist images, their household shrines, their beautiful and touching worship of ancestors. This is the life of which a foreign observer can never weary, if fortunate and sympathetic enough to enter into it,—the life that forces him sometimes to doubt whether the course of our boasted Western progress is really in the direction of moral development. Each day, while the years pass, there will be revealed to him some strange and unsuspected beauty in it. Like other life, it has its darker side; yet even this is brightness compared with the darker side of Western existence. It has its foibles, its follies, its vices, its cruelties; yet the more one sees of it, the more one marvels at its extraordinary goodness, its miraculous patience, its never-failing courtesy, its simplicity of heart, its intuitive charity. And to our own larger Occidental comprehension, its commonest superstitions, however contemned at Tōkyō, have rarest value as fragments of the unwritten literature of its hopes, its fears, its experience with right and wrong,—its primitive efforts to find solutions for the riddle of the Unseen.
Contents:—
Volume I.
I. My First Day in the Orient
II. The Writing of Kōbōdaishi
III. Jizō
IV. A Pilgrimage to Enoshima
V. At the Market of the Dead (Atlantic Monthly, September, 1891)
VI. Bon-Odori
VII. The Chief City of the Province of the Gods (Atlantic Monthly, November, 1891)
VIII. Kitzuki: The Most Ancient Shrine in Japan (Atlantic Monthly, December, 1891)
IX. In the Cave of the Children's Ghosts
X. At Mionoseki
XI. Notes on Kitzuki
XII. At Hinomisaki
XIII. Shinjū
XIV. Yaegaki-Jinja
XV. Kitsune
Volume II.
XVI. In a Japanese Garden (Atlantic Monthly, July, 1892)
XVII. The Household Shrine
XVIII. Of Women's Hair
XIX. From the Diary of an English Teacher
XX. Two Strange Festivals
XXI. By the Japanese Sea
XXII. Of a Dancing Girl (Atlantic Monthly, July, 1893)
XXIII. From Hōki to Oki
XXIV. Of Souls
XXV. Of Ghosts and Goblins
XXVI. The Japanese Smile (Atlantic Monthly, May, 1893)
XXVII. Sayōnara!