living, and was at last compelled to resort to authorship for a subsistence. At first Kiseki allowed his works to be published in Jishō's name; but as their popularity became established, he insisted on his own name also appearing on the title-page. Ultimately author and publisher quarrelled, and Kiseki opened an independent establishment, where a good number of his works were brought out. Some go so far as to say that Jishō never wrote anything, but that the books which bear his signature were in all cases really the work of Kiseki or other needy authors, whom he paid for their services. Whatever may have been the relations between them, the two names Jishō and Kiseki are constantly associated by the Japanese, just as we speak of Erckmann-Chatrian or Besant and Rice.
Kiseki died about 1736, in his seventieth year, and Jishō in 1745, at an advanced age. In a preface to his last published work, the latter commends to the favour of the public his son Kishō and his grandson Zuishō, who were authors of writings of a similar character to those for which the Hachimonjiya had acquired its reputation. One of these, printed in 1746, contains a catalogue of one hundred and three publications of this notorious press. The names of a considerable proportion are sufficiently indicative of their character. They are pornographic novels, tales, or sketches. Even when the title is a harmless one, the reader after a few pages is pretty sure to find himself introduced to one of the Kuruwa or brothel-quarters of Kiōto or elsewhere, and the manners and customs of these places furnish a large part of the subject-matter.
There is a reason, if not an excuse, for the prevailing choice of this unsavoury topic by Japanese writers of
