as a bookseller's assistant, in which situation he remained three years. A novel which he wrote at this period, and which was illustrated by Hokusai, was very successful.
Bakin was a tall, well-built man. One day the manager of a company of wrestlers came into the bookseller's shop. He greatly admired Bakin's stature (over six feet), and said, "Join us, my boy, and I promise you a reputation which will extend everywhere within the four seas." Bakin laughed, but vouchsafed no answer. The old Samurai pride still clung to him. The uncle of his employer, who kept a tea-house, supported by the custom of an adjoining brothel, proposed to Bakin that he should marry his daughter, a girl of considerable personal attractions. Bakin refused disdainfully to become connected with a family which drew its income from this source. Brothel-keeping, he said, was no better than begging or thieving, and he must decline to disgrace the body he had received from his parents by such a marriage. He left the bookseller in order to marry the daughter of the widow of a dealer in shoes in Iida-machi, becoming his mother-in-law's adopted son and heir, as is the Japanese custom. He was too fond of the pen and ink-slab, however, to be a good business man, and as soon as his daughter reached a marriageable age he provided her with a husband, to whom he handed over the shoe business. He himself went to live with his son, who now held the position of physician-in-ordinary to the Daimio of Matsumaye. Bakin not only contributed to the household resources by keeping a school, but earned a considerable income from the novels which he produced in rapid succession. At the age of seventy he became almost blind, but he still continued his labours, his
