One cold winter's night a young shizoku of Matsuë, while on his way home from a wedding-party, was surprised to perceive a firefly-light hovering above the canal in front of his dwelling. Wondering that such an insect should be flying abroad in the season of snow, he stopped to look at it; and the light suddenly shot toward him. He struck at it with a stick; but it darted away, and flew into the garden of a residence adjoining his own.
Next morning he made a visit to that house, intending to relate the adventure to his neighbours and friends. But before he found a chance to speak of it, the eldest daughter of the family, happening to enter the guest-room without knowing of the young man's visit, uttered a cry of surprise, and exclaimed, "Oh! how you startled me! No one told me that you had called; and just as I came in I was thinking about you. Last night I had so strange a dream! I was flying in my dream,--flying above the canal in front of our house. It seemed very pleasant to fly over the water; and while I was flying there I saw you coming along the bank. Then I went to you to tell you that I had learned how to fly; but you struck at me, and frightened me so that I still feel afraid when I think of it.. .." After hearing this, the visitor thought it best not to relate his own experience for the time being, lest the coincidence should alarm the girl, to whom he was betrothed.
Fireflies have been celebrated in Japanese poetry from ancient time; and frequent mention of them is made in early classical prose. One of the fifty-four chapters of the famous novel, _Genji-Monogari_, for example,--written either toward the close of the tenth century or at the beginning of the eleventh,--is entitled, "Fireflies"; and the author relates how a certain noble person was enabled to obtain one glimpse of a lady's face in the dark by the device of catching and suddenly liberating a number of fireflies. The first literary interest in fireflies may have been stimulated, if not aroused, by the study of Chinese poetry. Even to-day every Japanese child knows a little song about the famous Chinese scholar who, in the time of his struggles with poverty, studied by the light of a paper bag filled with fireflies. But, whatever the original source of their inspiration, Japanese poets have been making verses about fireflies during more than a thousand years. Compositions on the subject can be found in every form of Japanese poetry; but the greater number of firefly poems are in _hokku_,--the briefest of all measures, consisting of only seventeen syllables. Modern love-poems relating to the firefly are legion; but the majority of these, written in the popular twenty-six-syllable form called _dodoïtsu_, appear to consist of little more than variants of one old classic fancy, comparing the silent burning of the insect's light to the consuming passion that is never uttered.