Identifier: mikadosempire05grif (find matches)
Title: The mikado's empire
Year: 1894 (1890s)
Authors: Griffis, William Elliot, 1843-1928
Subjects:
Publisher: New York, Harper & brothers
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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red work, bronze, or porce-lain, these mythical topers, with the implements of their mirth and ex-cess, are seen represented. The associations of a Japanese child whofirst looks upon a man of red beard or hair may be imagined. Sogoes through all ages and ranks of life a more or less deep-rooted ter-ror of non-existent monstrosities; and although many Japanese peoplein the cities and towns laugh at these superstitions, yet among theinaka, or country people, they are living realities, not to be trifledwith or defied. In company, round the hearth, one fellow may bebold enough to challenge their existence; but at night, on the lonelyroad, or in the mountain solitudes, or in the presence of natures moreawful phenomena, the boor, the child, and even the grown men whoreason, are awed into belief and fear. That they are fading away, how-ever, year by year, is most evident. Science, the press, education, andChristianity are making these mythical animals extinct species in thegeology of belief.
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FOLK-LOME AND FIBEHLDE STOEIES. 491 XIII. FOLK-LORE AND FIRESIDE STORIES. The hibaclii, or fire-brazier, is to the Japanese household what thehearth or fire-place is in an Occidental home. Around it friends meet,the family gathers, parents consult, children play, the cat purrs, andthe little folks listen to the fairy legends or household lore from nurseor grandame. I have often, in many a Japanese home, seen children thus gatheredround the hibachi, absorbing through open eyes and ears and mouththe marvelous stories which disguise the mythology, philosophy, andnot a little of the wisdom of the worlds childhood. Even the sameworld, with its beard grown, finds it a delight to listen now and thento the old wives fables, and I propose in this chapter to give a few ofthe many short stories with which every Japanese child is familiar,and which I have often heard myself from children, or from the lipsof older persons, while sitting round the hibachi, or which I have hadwritten for me. The art

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