Aki no ta no kari ho no iho no toma wo arami waga koromo-de ha tsuyu ni nuretsutsu. 17 Haru sugite natsu ki nikerashi shirotaheno koromo hosu chifu Ama no Kaguyama. 18 Ashihikino yamadori no wo no shidari wo no naganagashi yo wo hitori ka mo nemu. 19 Tago no ura ni uchi-idete mireba shirotaheno Fuji no takane ni yuki ha furitsutsu. 20 Okuyama ni momiji fumi-wake naku shika no kowe kiku toki so aki ha kanashiki. 21 Ama no hara furisake mireba Kasuga naru Mikasa no yama ni ideshi tsuki ka mo. 22 Hana no iro ha utsuri nikerina itadzura ni wagami yo ni furu nagameseshi ma ni. 23 Tsukubane no mine yori otsuru Mina no kaha kohi so tsumorite fuchi to narinuru. TAKETORI NO OKINA NO MONOGATARI TEXT TRANSLITERATED INTRODUCTION Only three editions of the Taketori--apart from recent reprints--are known to me: one in two thin volumes, quaintly illustrated, block-printed in _hiragana_ with occasional _ji_ in cursive, probably an eighteenth-, possibly a seventeenth-century production; another, also in two volumes, _Taketori m. g. shô_ (notes), 1785, with commentary by Koyama no Tadashi; and lastly the elaborate edition of Tanaka Daishiu (died 1853), in six volumes[7], on which the present translation and most of the notes thereto are based. The text, no doubt, is more or less corrupt, and this circumstance, in part, explains the occasional roughness of style and the absence of proper articulation at the _juncturae_. The story of the Mikado’s suit and of the ascension to the moon is fairly free from these defects, and so also is the fictitious narrative, related by the sham hero of the second Quest, of his voyage to Hôrai. Up to the seventeenth century almost all books in Japan, with the exception of Buddhist and Chinese reprints, were manuscripts[8], and it is possible that the Taketori, like the Manyôshiu, was written in Chinese script[9], used more or less phonetically. The reading of this would often be traditional, and copyist errors would be frequent, especially in regard to cursive forms, a combination of sources of confusion that could not but be fruitful in corruptions, as has already been remarked in the case of the Manyôshiu. FOOTNOTES [7] In which not only Koyama’s work is made use of but also the notes of Keichiu (d. 1701) in his _Kasha_, and the suggestions of Daishiu’s master, Motowori, the Venerable of Suzu no ya--the House of the Horsebell--as he is termed in Daishiu’s preface and introductory letter. An estimate of Daishiu’s work will be found _infra_. [8] See Satow’s ‘Hist. of Printing’, _T. A. S. J._, vol. x.