Hirayama Shû 平山周 Version, 1912. One of the most influential works on Triads, Hirayama Shû's History of Chinese Secret Societies 中國秘密社會史 was first published in 1911 in Japanese, and then translated into Chinese in 1912. In this work, Hirayama Shû, a Japanese supporter of Sun Yatsen, writes about various secret societies, devoting chapters to the White Lotus 白蓮會, Tiandihui 天地會, Sanhehui 三合會, Gelaohui 哥老會, Xingzhonghui 興中會, Tongmenhui 同盟會, and Guanfu gonghui 光復公會 (Murray 1994, p. 121). Hirayama is credited with introducing the Western term “secret society” (mimi shehui 秘密社會) into Chinese (ter Haar 1998, p. 36). Unfortunately, Hirayama's account of the Xi Lu legend is plagiarized. According to ter Haar, “As a result of this reinvestigation, we have to conclude that one of the standard resources of Chinese and Japanese language scholarship, namely the 1911 book (translated into Chinese in 1912) by Hirayama Shû, is a (badly) plagiarized version of the 1900 study on the Hong Kong Triads by W. Stanton” (1994, p. 28). Information on William Stanton's work can be found below. An English translation of Hirayama's Xi Lu legend can be found in Murray (1994) pp. 220-228.
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