As to the texts, for the first series of fairy-tale readers Hasegawa commissioned translations from three of his friends in the missionary community: David Thomson, Basil H. Chamberlain, and Kate James. The Reverend Thomson had come to Japan in the 1860s, became fluent in Japanese, and worked with the Carrothers at their school. He was an influential figure in Japanese Bible translation and, perhaps not surprisingly, the stories he chose to translate emphasized moral lessons, in line with Victorian values regarding the education of children. Basil H. Chamberlain, a British diplomat born to an aristocratic family, had earned a reputation as a Japanologist, writing travel books, ethnographies, and other materials about Japan. More of a scholar than the other translators — he was a professor at the Imperial Tokyo University with a particular interest in folklore — Chamberlain was the most familiar name to be associated with the first series, and certainly contributed to its popularity. He even commissioned Hasegawa to publish a special set of Ainu fairy tales, because of his personal interest in the culture of the Ainu, the indigenous community in Hokkaido. Kate James translated the largest number of books, and, like the Reverend Thomson, focused on stories that promoted moral lessons. She is a somewhat mysterious figure, however. We know little about her, except that she came from a Scottish clergy family, met her husband, Thomas H. James, in Constantinople, and moved with him to Japan, where she befriended his Imperial Japanese Naval Academy colleague, Basil H. Chamberlain. The earliest volumes in the Japanese Fairy Tale Series really were very much a product of Tokyo’s close-knit expat community.