history of japan - Library

in every one of these the reading of the Chūshingura
begins with the lighting of the lamps and continues through
the night of the fourteenth of the twelfth month (old style) as
regularly as the year comes round.
A very scholarly and complete translation of the
Chūshingura was made and published by the late Mr. F. V.
Dickins under the title of The Chūshingura, or the Loyal
League, a Japanese Romance, The play occupies a
greater position on the Japanese stage than even Macbeth
or Hamlet on the English and deservedly so, as it is full of
thrilling incidents, vividly illustrative of the life of the period. It
is always well put on the stage, and well acted.---J. H. L.
[2] Sir Rutherford Alcock almost invariably, both in his
admirable description of life in Japan in his day in what is
still one of the most interesting books that has been written
on Japan (The Capital of the Tycoon., 2 vole., 1863) and in
his official dispatches, took the very worst view of the
character and disposition of the samurai. The samurai was,
in his eyes, "of that extinct species in Europe, still
remembered as ‘swash-bucklers', swaggering, blustering
bullies, many cowardly enough to strike an enemy in the
back or cut down an unarmed or inoffensive man, but also
supplying numbers ever ready to fling their own lives away
in accomplishing a revenge or in carrying out the behests of
their chief . . . no mean adepts in the use of their swords
from which they were never parted; one a heavy, two-