There lived one Yurine, a man of poor means even for those days. He loved saké wine, and scarcely ever spent a day without drinking some of it. Yurine lived near the place which is now called Sudzukawa,...

Once upon a time there was a scholar who lived retired from the world in order to gain hidden wisdom. He lived alone and in a secret place. And all about the little house in which he dwelt he had planted...

In the Sea of Dungting there is a hill, and in that hill there is a hole, and this hole is so deep that it has no bottom. Once a fisherman was passing there who slipped and fell into the hole. He came...

In the land of Annam there once dwelt a man named Su, who sailed the seas as a merchant. Once his ship was suddenly driven on a distant shore by a great storm. It was a land of hills broken by ravines...

Once upon a time there was a young man named Du Dsi Tschun. In his youth he was a spendthrift and paid no heed to his property. He was given to drink and idling. When he had run through all his money,...

Little Good Boy had just finished eating the last of five rice cakes called "dango," that had been strung on a skewer of bamboo and dipped in soy sauce, when he said to his little sister, called Chrysanthemum:...

In the year 1680 there stood an old temple on a wild pine-clad mountain near the village of Kisaichi, in the Province of Inaba. The temple was far up in a rocky ravine. So high and thick were the trees,...

At the time that the Tang dynasty was reigning there lived a man named Liu I, who had failed to pass his examinations for the doctorate. So he traveled home again. He had gone six or seven miles when...

Many years ago there lived at the foot of the Mountains of Nambu, in Adachi gun, Saitama Prefecture, an old man named Kikuo, which means Chrysanthemum-Old-Man. Kikuo was a faithful retainer of Tsugaru;...

Up in the northern city of Sendai, whence come the best of Japanese soldiers, there lived a samurai named Hasunuma. Hasunuma was rich and hospitable, and consequently much thought of and well liked....