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ANCIENT TALES AND FOLK-LORE OF JAPAN
by Richard Gordon Smith
London, A. & C. Black
[1918]
NOTICE OF ATTRIBUTION
Scanned at sacred-texts.com, February 2006. Edited and Proofed by John Bruno Hare. This text is in the public domain in the United States because it was published prior to January 1st, 1923. These files may be used for any non-commercial purpose provided this notice of attribution is left intact in all copies.
TO
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE SIR ERNEST MASON SATOW, K.C.M.G. IN REMEMBRANCE OF HIS KINDNESS IN JAPAN
Preface
THE stories in this volume are transcribed from voluminous illustrated diaries which have been kept by me for some twenty years spent in travel and in sport in many lands--the last nine of them almost entirely in Japan, while collecting subjects of natural history for the British Museum; trawling and dredging in the Inland Sea, sometimes with success, sometimes without, but in the end contributing to the treasury some fifty things new to Science, and, according to Sir Edwin Ray Lankester, 'adding greatly to the knowledge of Japanese Ethnology.' As may be supposed, such a life has brought me into close contact with the people--the fisher, the farmer, the priest, the doctor, the children, and all others from whom there is a possibility of extracting information. Many and weird are the tales I have been told. In this volume the Publishers prefer to have a mixture--stories of Mountains, of Trees, of Flowers, of Places in History, and Legends. For the general results obtained in my diaries I have to thank our late Minister in Tokio, Sir Ernest Satow; the Ministers and Vice-Ministers of Foreign Affairs and of Agricultu
Ancient Tales and Folk-Lore of Japan
by Richard Gordon Smith