of Chinese forms of whole ideographs.

ENGRAVING: MURASAKI SHIKIBU (COURT LADY AND POETESS)

"Much of the poetry of this time was the outcome of poetical
tournaments at which themes were proposed to the competitors by
judges who examined each phrase and word with the minutest critical
care before pronouncing their verdict. As might be expected, the
poetry produced in those circumstances is of a more or less
artificial type, and is wanting in the spontaneous vigour of the
earlier essays of the Japanese muse. Conceits, acrostics, and
untranslatable word-plays hold much too prominent a place, but for
perfection of form the poems of this time are unrivalled. It is no
doubt to this quality that the great popularity of the Kokin-shu is
due. Sei Shonagon, writing in the early years of the eleventh
century, sums up a young lady's education as consisting of writing,
music, and the twenty volumes of the Kokin-shu."*

*Japanese Literature, by W. G. Aston.

The first notable specimen of prose in Japanese style (wabun) was the
preface to the Kokin-shu, written by Ki no Tsurayuki, who contended,
and his own composition proved, that the introduction of Chinese
words might well be dispensed with in writing Japanese. But what may
be called the classical form of Japanese prose was fixed by the
Taketori Monogatari,* an anonymous work which appeared at the
beginning of the Engi era (901),** and was quickly followed by
others. Still, the honour in which the ideograph was held never
diminished. When Tsurayuki composed the Tosa Nikki (Tosa Diary), he
gave it out as the work of a woman, so reluctant was he to identify
himself with a book written in the kana syllabary; and the Emperor
Saga, Kobo Daishi, and Tachibana Hayanari will be remembered forever
in Japan as the "Three Calligraphists" (Sampitsu).

*The expression "monogatari" finds its nearest English equivalent in
"narrative."

**An excellent translation of this has been made by Mr. F. V. Dickins
in the "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society," Jan., 1887.

In short, an extraordinary love of literature and of all that
pertained to it swayed the minds of Japan throughout the Nara and the
Heian epochs. The ninth and tenth centuries produced such poets as
Ariwara no Yukihira and his younger brother, Narihira; Otomo no
Kuronushi, Ochikochi no Mitsune, Sojo Henjo, and the poetess Ono no
Komachi; gave us three anthologies (Sandai-shu), the Kokin-shu, the
Gosen-shu, and the Shui-shu, a