Poetry,--and these were collected and edited to form the three volumes
of which I became the fortunate possessor. The collecting was done by
a certain Takumi Jingor[=o], who wrote under the literary pseudonym
"Temmér Ré[=o]jin" (Ancient of the Temmér Era). Takumi died in the
first year of Bunky[=u] (1861), at the good age of eighty; and his
collection seems to have been published in the sixth year of Kaéï
(1853). The pictures were made by an artist called Masazumi, who
worked under the pseudonym "Ry[=o]sai Kanjin."

From a prefatory note it appears that Takumi Jingor[=o] published his
collection with the hope of reviving interest in a once popular kind
of poetry which had fallen into neglect before the middle of the
century. The word _ky[=o]ka_ is written with a Chinese character
signifying "insane" or "crazy;" and it means a particular and
extraordinary variety of comic poetry. The form is that of the classic
_tanka_ of thirty-one syllables (arranged 57577);--but the subjects
are always the extreme reverse of classical; and the artistic effects
depend upon methods of verbal jugglery which cannot be explained
without the help of numerous examples. The collection published by
Takumi includes a good deal of matter in which a Western reader can
discover no merit; but the best of it has a distinctly grotesque
quality that reminds one of Hood's weird cleverness in playing with
grim subjects. This quality, and the peculiar Japanese method of
mingling the playful with the terrific, can be suggested and explained
only by reproducing in Romaji the texts of various _ky[=o]ka_, with
translations and notes.

The selection which I have made should prove interesting, not merely
because it will introduce the reader to a class of Japanese poetry
about which little or nothing has yet been written in English, but