Hundred stories concerning last days of the Tokugawa shogunate (幕末百話)
Hundred stories concerning last days of the Tokugawa shogunate are a collection of retrospective stories on the end of the Edo period and Meiji Restoration which appeared serially in Hochi Shinbun (newspaper) in 1902. A news reporter, Kozo SHINODA, collected the stories from the old men.
Those who told the stories were ordinary citizens, and their social classes and stories are diverse. They are important records of evidences based on the real experiences, which you only get from the people concerned: for example, kinban zamurai (samurai being on duty in Edo) told the Sakuradamongai Incident; a person in charge of tools told the famous actor; the survivors of Shogitai (group of former Tokugawa retainers opposed to the Meiji government who fought in the Battle of Ueno) told how the defeated army ran away; osukiya bozu (a monk serving the feudal lord in Edo castle) told the tea pot journey. On the other hand, the names of discoursers and dates of record were not written, so some people consider that you have to be careful of treating them as historical materials.
It is also known as subject materials for the historical novel writers. A companion volumes to this book are "Meiji Hyakuwa" (hundred stories of the Meiji period), "Bakumatsu Meiji Onna Hyakuwa" (hundred stories of women in the last days of the Edo and Meiji periods) (Iwanami bunko, two volumes), "Ginza Hyakuwa" (hundred stories of Ginza) (republished by Kuress Publishing in 2006), "Meiji Kaika Kidan" (strange stories of Meiji civilization) (Kadokawa Group Puboishing Co., Ltd.), and so on.
The selected edition was once republished by Kadokawa Group Publishing Co., Ltd., but now Iwanami bunko edition is available (ISBN 4003346912).