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            Old-World Japan

       Legends of the Land of the
       Gods + + Re-told by Frank
      Rinder + With Illustrations
          by T. H. Robinson


     "The spirit of Japan is as the
  fragrance of the wild cherry-blossom
           in the dawn of the
              rising sun"


          London: George Allen
         156 Charing Cross Road
                  1895




  Old-World Japan

  [Illustration: Publisher's device]




  Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
  At the Ballantyne Press




Preface


History and mythology, fact and fable, are closely interwoven in the
texture of Japanese life and thought; indeed, it is within relatively
recent years only that exact comparative criticism has been able, with
some degree of accuracy, to divide the one from the other. The
accounts of the God-period contained in the Kojiki and the
Nihongi--"Records of Ancient Matters" compiled in the eighth century
of the Christian era--profess to outline the events of the vast cycles
of years from the time of Ame-no-mi-naka-nushi-no-kami's birth in the
Plain of High Heaven, "when the earth, young and like unto floating
oil, drifted about medusa-like," to the death of the Empress Suiko,
A.D. 628.

The first six tales in this little volume are founded on some of the
most significant and picturesque incidents of this God-period. The
opening legend gives a brief relation of the birth of several of the
great Shinto deities, of the creation of Japan and of the world,