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英譯. 佐倉宗五郎之傳. The Ghost of Sakura. Translated into English … With Illustrations.

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Extremely rare Tokyo-printed edition of this English rendition of the tale of Sakura Sōgorō, the legendary peasant-martyr of seventeenth-century Japan.

The translator, Algernon Bertram Mitford (1837–1916) – later Freeman-Mitford, 1^st Baron Redesdale, and grandfather of the Mitford sisters – was posted in 1866 as an attaché to the British mission to Japan, then in the throes of civil war. There, having mastered the language, he collected and translated some two dozen Japanese stories in an influential anthology, Tales of Old Japan (1871, expanded thereafter). Among these was the present tale, which tells of the folk hero Sakura Sōgorō who, after seeking redress from over-taxation by his avaricious lord, was crucified in front of his wife and children, who were also put to death. Though likely mythical, by Mitford’s time Sakura had achieved legendary status as a martyr for the downtrodden and was celebrated by the modernisers of the Meiji Restoration as an anti-feudal rebel.

This is the second of only two separate printings of the story, the first having been issued by Jūjiya at Tokyo in 1883 and likewise very rare (NDL and UCLA only in OCLC). Little is known of our publishers, the Seishi-bunsha (Paper Manufacturing Branch Company) of Kabutochō in Nihonbashi and its successor, the Tokyo Printing Company, though they appear to have published widely in both Japanese and Western languages, with much missionary material among the latter.

Exceedingly rare: OCLC finds only two copies worldwide (Cleveland Public Library, Grinnell). Not in Library Hub.