of restraint, more or less fruitless, have been adopted by scandalised authority to curb her sovereignty.
As for the novelists, three great names in Japanese fiction may be cited at once. Saikaku, who died at Ōsaka in 1693, wrote an enormous number of amusing stories and sketches of contemporary life. The rollicking life of the gay lupanars was his favourite theme. Mr. Aston assures us that "the very titles are too gross for quotation." Even his contemporaries were shocked, and a virulent criticism, entitled "Saikaku in Hell," brought about the suppression of his works by the Government. A new edition has lately been permitted to appear. In the next century his example was followed and bettered by Jishō, whose name signifies "Spontaneous Laughter." He was a Kyōto publisher, and his place of business, the Hachimoniji-ya, or Figure Eight House, was as popular in its day with lovers of sex-novels as the Bodley Head itself. He had a collaborator, called Kesiki; and whether he supplied the humour and Kesiki the psychology I cannot say, but their joint productions aimed at something higher than Rabelaisian mirth. They aspired to the laurels of Theophrastus, delineating "Types of Elderly Men," "Types of Merchants' Assistants," "Types of Girlhood," and the like. But whatever the type selected, the reader was sure to pass most of his time with it in fast society. Well, Spontaneous Laughter died, but his firm continued to publish sharebon, or witty books, until the end of the eighteenth century, when once more the authorities swooped down and made an end. The fame of both these novelists is eclipsed by that of Kiōden (1761-1861), the father of the romantic novel. His predecessors had made men titter, but he bade them shudder or
