On his deathbed he left instructions that his body should not be washed, but cremated just as it was, and enjoined on his pupils to place along with it certain closed packets which he entrusted to them. The funeral prayers having been read, the torch was applied, when presently, to the astonishment of his sorrowing friends and pupils, a series of explosions took place, and a display of shooting stars issued from the corpse. The precious packets contained fireworks.
Ikku's first work, exclusive of the dramatic piece above mentioned, was published in 1796 at Yedo, where he had then been settled for six or seven years. Others followed, but it is useless to enumerate them, as their fame has been eclipsed by that of the Hizakurige, the great work with which Ikku's name is always associated.
The Hizakurige was published in twelve parts, the first of which appeared in 1802, the last not until 1822. It occupies a somewhat similar position in Japan to that of the Pickwick Papers in this country, and is beyond question the most humorous and entertaining book in the Japanese language. Hizakurige means "knee-chestnut-horse," the Japanese equivalent for our "shank's mare." It is the history of the travels, mostly on foot, as the title indicates, of two worthies named Yajirōbei and Kidahachi along the Tōkaidō and other great highways of Japan, and of their manifold adventures and mishaps. Yajirōbei, Yajirō, or Yaji, as he is indifferently called, is an elderly man of the shopkeeper class, whom some Japanese insist on identifying with Ikku himself. There are points of resemblance, but this, like most such identifications, is in reality fallacious. Indeed there is a passage in the fifth part of the Hizakurige which seems intended as a repudiation of the suggestion. Yaji is here repre-
