A beautifully bound book collecting 49 legends and retellings representative in the Taisho era. It was published subsequent to the publication of Sekai Dôwa Hôgyoku Shû [The Treasury of World Tales for Children] in 1919. It is considered as one of the principal works by Kusuyama Masao. A second volume was published in 1922.
Source materials for stories collected in the first volume are: Nihonshoki and Kojiki, the oldest Japanese history books of the seventh century; Kogoshûi, another history book of eighth century; and legends. Sources for stories in the second volume were: Otogi Zôshi, short stories based on folktales; Konjaku Monogatari and Uji Shûi Monogatari, Buddhist and secular narratives of twelfth and thirtieth centuries; and other legends. Kusuyama tried to choose universal stories as much as possible and to express them in a free and new way. His sentences are easy to read and inspire the imagination.
Kusuyama admitted in a note that there had never been a book containing
stories so comprehensively. Seta Teiji highly rated the literariness and
the variety of the stories collected in this book. |
