The Story of the Forty-seven Re the best-known and perhaps the most in: teresting of the romantic stories of the feudal days in Japan, forms the subject of the latest volume of Mr, Ogawa's beautiful collotypes, and we have to thank the publishera here, Mesara, Kelly & Walsh, Ld., for a copy of it. Mr, James Murdoch provides the letter-press, and relates the true story of the death of Lord Asano, the assassination of Lord Hira, and the heroism of the forty. tells us in the introduction possibly no one single incident in the history of the Tokugawa regime that appeals to the Tupaneso imagination with anything like the force of this; Even in these monoygrubbing days, when the atmosphere Of the street, of the railway cars, of the public parks in holiday time even, Fapan atill contrives to rotaly her regard positively reeks of yen, sen, and rin,
fand_xdmiration for the loyalty and self-sacrifice of the Forty-seven. Of course, of this regard and admiration a fair proportion is no doubt merely conventional and assumed, for the cruel money-lust of our modern civilisation has throttled the old samurai honour and spirit like a foot and in many cases done it utterly to d But notwithstanding, some residue still remains, One might almost infer "s much from n visit to the old temple of Sengaluji embosomed in its groves, and ringed around above with its tombstone-covered sweep of bluffs and knoll, and heights draped with feathery bamboos and crowned with living This mies gives us photographs of Sengakuji and the tombs, done with all the artistic care to which "Mr. Ogawa has accustomed us, and of Kamakura and Daibuteu, the former having been wade the scene of the tragedy in one of the most celebrated dramatisations of the story. The rest of the sixteen large photographs in the volume are from a performance of this, Takeda Izumo's play of the Chiushingura (after which the volume is named). They are capital pictures of the costumes and manners of the period, but they are inferior in life and expression to Japanese pictures of the story. Beautiful and accurate as they are. they do not live, though they are taken from life. The figures are posing, not acting.
But we have had to praise Ogawa's work often und so fully, that it is needless to say more of the execution of the photographs in this volume, This and its companions make beyond question the best memorials of Japan that the collector can acquire, and many of our readers who have incomplete sets of them will no doubt be glad to have a complete list. They are The Great Earthquake of Japan.
Matsushima, One of the Three Famous Views.
Chrysanthemums of Japan.
diapanese Life.
Costumes and Customs of Jay The Celebrated Geishus of Tol Scenes in Nikko and Vicinity.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.