# Japan: Its History, Arts, and Literature/Volume 1/Chapter 5

Chapter V
THE JAPANESE IN THE NARA EPOCH
The restoration of the administrative power to the Emperor in the middle of the seventh century, which was marked by the great legislative measures already spoken of and by the re-modelling of the government on Chinese bureaucratic lines, prefaced a period generally known as the "Nara, or Heijo, epoch" (709–784), because the town of Nara, then chosen as the imperial capital, had the distinction of being the first city to hold that rank independently of changes of sovereign. Hitherto it had been the custom for the Emperor and the heir apparent to reside in different places, and of course there grew up about the palace of the prince material interests and moral associations opposed to a change of habitation. Hence on his accession to the throne, he usually transferred the capital of the empire from the place occupied by his predecessor to the site of his own palace. In addition to this source of frequent change, it happened occasionally that the residence of the Imperial Court, and therefore ​the capital of the empire, was moved from one place to another twice or even thrice during the same reign, the only limit set to all these shiftings being that the five adjacent provinces occupying the waist of the main island, and known as "Gokinai," were regarded as possessing some prescriptive title to contain the seat of government, Yamato being especially honoured in that respect. A long list might be compiled of places distinguished by imperial residence during the early centuries, notable among them being Kashiwara, the capital of the Emperor Jimmu; Naniwa (now Osaka), that of the Emperor Nintoku; Otsu, that of the Emperor Tenchi; and Fujiwara, that of the Emperor Temmu. It must be noted, however, that in those ages of comparative simplicity and frugality, the seat of government was not invested with attributes of pomp and grandeur such as the haughtier conceptions of later generations prescribed. The sovereign's mode of life differed little from that of his subjects, and the transfer of his residence from place to place involved no costly or disturbing effect. But as civilisation progressed, as the population grew, as the business of administration became more complicated, as increasing intercourse with China furnished new standards for measuring the interval between ruler and ruled, and, above all, as class distinctions acquired emphasis, the character of the palace assumed magnificence proportionate to ​the imperial ceremonies and national receptions that had to be held there. By the beginning of the eighth century, this development had reached a stage which necessitated a permanent capital, and Nara, thenceforth called Heijo (the castle of peace), was chosen.
The capital established there was on a scale of unprecedented size and splendour, and a lady's name—that of the Empress Gemmiyo—is fitly associated with this tribute to outward appearances. The plan of the city was taken from that of the Chinese metropolis. There were nine gates and nine avenues. The palace stood in the northern section and was approached from the south by an avenue, broad and perfectly straight, which divided the city into two exactly equal halves, the "left metropolis" and the "right metropolis." All the other streets ran in perfect parallelism with this main avenue, or at right angles to it. Seven sovereigns reigned in succession at Nara. Some partial attempts were made from time to time to revive the old custom of changing the Court's residence on a change of emperor, but the unprecedentedly grand dimensions which Nara had quickly assumed, and the group of magnificent temples that had sprung up there in a brief period, constituted a metropolitan title which could not be ignored.
The Nara epoch owes its prominent place in history chiefly to the extraordinary zeal ​shown by the Court and the great nobles in promoting the spread of Buddhism. During the seventy-five years comprised in the epoch, no less than seven of the grandest temples ever seen in Japan were erected; a multitude of idols were cast, among them a gigantic Daibutsu; colossal bells were founded, and all the best artists and artisans of the time devoted their services to these costly works. The mania reached its zenith in the reign of the Emperor Shomu (724–749), whose religious zeal was supplemented by a love of pomp that led him to lavish great sums on rich costumes, expensive sports, and handsome edifices, and by superstition so profound that whenever any natural calamity or abnormal phenomenon occurred, he caused religious services to be performed at heavy cost. In addition to the large demands of the central treasury, salaries and emoluments for the leading officials were assessed on a liberal scale; the Prime Minister's pay being equal to the earning capacities of three thousand families, that of the second Minister to the earnings of two thousand families, and so on in a descending rate.
The agricultural classes, who were the chief tax-payers, began to show themselves unequal to this strain. It was also appreciated that the theory of State ownership of land, applied according to the provisions of the Taikwa and Taihō legislation, produced a demoralising effect upon the farmer, since he did not care to improve land which might ​be transferred to some one else in six years, and was at best secure for only one generation. The Government, therefore, began to recognise the principle of private ownership, and also to lend to agriculturists in spring such funds or articles as were required for the cultivation of their farms. In fact, the policy pursued by the State was a curious mixture of desire to reform and inability to retrench. Resolute efforts were made, for example, to improve means of communication by constructing roads and organising post-stations; but, at the same time, officially guarded fences and barriers were established at commanding points, the necessity of fixing the tax-payer immovably in one place being considered more important than the expediency of bringing new markets within reach of his produce. It was in the reign of this same Emperor (Shomu) that men witnessed the spectacle of the great Buddhist prelate Giyogi travelling about the country, attended by a large body of priests and acolytes, who, under his direction, began the building of bridges, the making of roads, the digging of canals and reservoirs, the improvement of harbours and the erection of embankments in various places where special engineering skill was needed. Inspired by such an example, the people flocked from all sides to complete these works, and the Government showed its appreciation of Giyogi's labours by redoubling its patronage of his creed.
The lower orders did not derive much benefit ​from these improved facilities of communication. Government officials alone were allowed to use the horses kept at the post-stations and to demand a night's board and lodging in the houses of wealthy persons en route. Common folk had still to carry their food with them when they made journeys, and to cook it wherever they might. In recognition of that necessity, it became habitual for a man's friends to present to him a little bag containing two or three flints and steels when he contemplated a journey. In exceptionally favourable conditions the wayfarer found shelter for the night under some friendly or charitable roof, but in general he bivouacked at the foot of a tree, or, if he was a man of rank travelling with a retinue, his attendants constructed a hut for his accommodation. Death from starvation on a journey was a not infrequent occurrence. To such a fate labourers especially were exposed who had been summoned to some remote place on corvée: they perished on their way home. The humane Empresses Gemmyo and Genshō (708–723) sought to abate these evils by establishing stores of grain at intervals along the principal highways, and by requiring wealthy people in the provinces to make arrangements for selling rice to travellers. A few years subsequently, an edict, issued at the suggestion of a Buddhist priest, required that fruit-trees should be planted on both sides of the main road in the five metropolitan ​provinces, and there can be no doubt that the noble rows of pines lining some of the public avenues of Japan were a later outcome of the custom thus inaugurated in the middle of the eighth century.
Architectural improvement was another conspicuous feature of the Nara epoch, and, like most incidents of Japanese progress, it owed much to official influence. A tiled roof seems to have been the chief ambition in the early stage of development, but the first attempt to construct one for the palace of the Empress Saimei (655–661) proved a failure, and it was not till the time of her successor, the Empress Jito, that the Government found itself able to issue an order for the tiling of all the State offices. There is difficulty in believing that during an era when applied art made such remarkable strides as it did in the second half of the seventh century, the bulk of the people were content to inhabit rudely built hovels with thatched or shingled roofs, and that even the imperial princes lived in houses of timber from which the bark had not been removed. It is true that to be a prince in those days did not necessarily imply the possession of wealth or even of a moderate competence, for sometimes the sovereign had to make special allowances of rice and salt to his relatives to save them from absolute want. But the opulent as well as the indigent were alike satisfied with dwellings of the lowliest character until the ​Nara epoch, when a new conception of the proper attributes of an empire's capital presented itself to Shomu's privy councillors. They addressed to the Throne a memorial insisting that the nation needed a metropolis worthy of the sovereign's residence and of the receptions his Majesty had to give to foreign embassies, and they argued that though houses with roofs of thatch and shingle had the sanction of ancient custom, such a method of construction could not be reconciled with any principles of sound economy. The result of these representations was an edict ordering that the houses of all officials of the central government from the fifth grade of rank upwards, as well as those of all wealthy commoners, must be tiled and painted red as expeditiously as possible, and soon afterwards the system was extended to the provinces. To estimate the significance of such an edict it has to be remembered that a change of generation usually meant the construction of a new house in that era. The religious prejudice against pollution was so strong that a house where a death had taken place was considered unfit for further occupation, and was either pulled down and rebuilt or abandoned altogether. The edict, therefore, had an immediately practical interest for those to whom it was addressed. As to the seemingly capricious order about red paint, its evident purpose was to put an end to the use of timber carrying the bark, and of course the ​choice of red was dictated by an instinctive knowledge of the law of complementary colours. The beautiful harmonies commonly seen in Japan between rich vermilion pagodas, or deep-red columns of temples, and their environment of green woods, had its origin in the desire to make religious edifices an object lesson to architects of private residences. But the project failed signally. Rough timbers, indeed, soon ceased to be used for building the houses of the upper classes, but no one could ever be induced to have his private residence of the prescribed tint. Red, in short, came to be regarded as a religious colour, and that fact alone would have sufficed to prevent its employment by lay architects, for in every age the Japanese have persistently refused to admit the structural or decorative style of sacred edifices into the domain of private architecture.
It is, perhaps, by considering the costumes of the Nara epoch that the clearest conception is obtained of the refinement of the nation's life at that time, and of the source from which it derived its new civilisation. Speaking generally, the garments worn by men differed much less from those of modern Europe than did the garments of the Japanese when they first became known to the Occident. The essentials were a tunic-like coat and trousers, the former having comparatively tight sleeves, and being girt at the waist by a belt made either of Korean brocade ​or of embroidered silk studded with plates of jade. Two other garments were added—one over the trousers and one over the coat—but they had nothing of the loose flowing character usually associated with Japanese dress. They were, in fact, copied with scarcely any change from the Chinese robes of the epoch, and had their dimensions been fuller, they would be identical with the Chinese robes of the present day. We thus conclude that, just as the men of modern Japan have copied the costumes of the Occident in adopting its civilisation, so the men of ancient Japan imported Chinese robes with Chinese systems of morality and administration.
Law after law was enacted regulating the exact measurements of these various articles and, above all, their quality and texture. In early times, the best material available was manufactured from the paper mulberry or from hemp; but, by and by, grass cloth and cotton fabrics came into use, and, in the fifth century, sericulture and silk-weaving were successfully practised. The silk then produced was of very inferior quality, and though several fine varieties—as sarcenet, figured silk, brocade, and so on—were soon obtained, they served for ornamental purposes rather than for every-day wear. But in the Nara epoch, neither the most elaborate fabrics that the home loom could turn out, nor yet the rare silks and brocades brought from China by the Buddhist priests, who made it a duty to familiarise ​Japan with all the best products of Asiatic skill, were deemed too costly for purposes of personal adornment. This extravagant tendency received its first impulse in the middle of the seventh century when, as part of the reforms and re-organisations consequent on the abolition of the patriarchal system and the assumption of administrative autonomy by the Emperor, the custom of employing hats to distinguish official grades was imported from China. The designing of these hats constituted quite a legislative occupation, and the story of the changes they underwent is bewildering. One excellent sovereign seems to have been reduced to a state of despairing recklessness by sumptuary problems, for he issued a decree declaring that everybody might wear anything he pleased. Other monarchs, however, grappled with the question, and it was not until the beginning of the eighth century, just before the commencement of the Nara epoch, that the many-hued hats of China were exchanged for a sober head-gear of uniform colour—silk gauze covered with black lacquer—better adapted to the artistic instincts of the Japanese. It must not be imagined that these finally evolved hats were intended to discharge any head-covering function; they were as innocent of such purpose as is the extravagant head-gear of fashionable ladies in the fin-du-siècle Occident. The hat, supposed to have the shape of a ​cicada, was poised on the top of the head much as an insect might have perched there. At the time when this fortunate simplicity was attained as to one article of costume, there were no less than eighteen ranks of princes, thirty principal ranks of officials, twenty supernumerary ranks, and twelve orders of merit. All these had to be differentiated by points of apparel, and as there were three costumes for each rank—the ceremonial costume, the Court costume, and the ordinary uniform—the task to be discharged by the bureau of etiquette was to devise two hundred and sixteen varieties of dress. Necessarily the pettiest details had to be enlisted in this phalanx of diversities. White trousers were always de rigueur, but a pure white girdle might be used by the Prince Imperial only: other princes were obliged to have embroidered or figured girdles, and the girdles of lower dignitaries had to be of designated colours. Jewels and jade necessarily adorned the belts of the upper ranks of princes. But that essentially Chinese fashion did not long survive in Japan. It has always been against the instinct of the Japanese male to use jewels of any kind for purposes of personal adornment. Socks were made of silk brocade—another extravagance ultimately abandoned in favour of white cotton-cloth—and the feet were thrust into black lacquered shoes with up-tilted toes. As for the colour of the upper garments, the general rule was that the deeper the colour, the higher ​the rank—purple, Indian red, crimson, cherry-red, blue, mulberry, leaf-green, grass-green, and so on, in fixed gradation. Unclassed officials and commoners had to wear yellow, and servants were clothed in black. Any departure from these rules in the sense of trespassing upon the costume of a higher rank, exposed the delinquent to severe punishment. Even the number of knots on the strings of an amulet-bag was a matter of regulation, and a high official, when in full dress, carried in his hand a flat piece of ivory, fourteen or fifteen inches long, in imitation of the tablets used by Chinese statesmen for writing orders or reports.
Ladies, too, were denied the privilege of choosing fashions for themselves. It has already been shown that, in very early times, both men and women wore strings of beads on their necks, arms, and legs, and there is evidence that each sex used to fasten spring-flowers or autumn sprays in the hair by way of ornament. Why and when these customs were abandoned there is nothing to show, but it is certain that, in the Nara epoch, ladies were required to use ornaments of gold, silver, or jade for their heads, and that these ornaments generally took the shape of the natural objects for which they were substituted, though sometimes forms from the Chinese grammar of art were chosen,—as highly conventionalised dragons and clouds, tortoises and waves, or Dogs of Fo and peonies. Legislators had fur-​ther the temerity to order the binding up of a lady's hair, which she had hitherto worn hanging loose, or merely bound by a fillet at the back of the head. But the authority of law proved abortive at this point: ladies laughed at a threat announced in an edict of the Emperor Temmu (673–686) that every long-haired female should be called a sorceress. In other respects, however, they had to bow to the law. High rank conferred on a lady the privilege of wearing her own locks; if she was below the sixth grade she had to have a wig. Her garments appear to have been shaped like those of the other sex; a fact which must have simplified matters considerably for the officials of the bureau of etiquette, and which was consistent with the important part acted by women in all affairs of religion and State. The Emperor Temmu (673–686) seems to have considered it desirable that the differences between the habits of the sexes should be still farther obliterated, for he forbade women to ride on horseback with both feet in one stirrup, as had hitherto been their wont, and ordered them to straddle their steeds in male fashion.
The etiquette of official intercourse naturally received much attention side by side with these minute regulations about costume. In the reign of the fanatically religious Empress Suiko ​(593–628), it had been enacted that any one entering the palace gate must kneel on both knees, place his hands on the ground, bow his head, and in that attitude crawl across the threshold. Twenty years later, this prostrate method of approach was abandoned; to be again revived shortly afterwards, and again finally abandoned towards the close of the seventh century. The Japanese, in fact, adopted Chinese customs sometimes faithfully, sometimes tentatively. They were disposed to take them wholesale, but equally disposed to reject them after trial. They did not then cover the floors of their rooms with the clean soft mats that subsequently came into universal use. Boards were employed, and kneeling on boards being irksome, a standing salutation was substituted. Matting, cushions, or skins were spread on the ground to serve as seats, but by high officials a large four-legged dais, à la Chinoise, was used. This solid, handsome article of furniture, with lacquered legs and edges, metal mountings, and brocade-rimmed matting on its surface, served as a kind of chair of state. Its occupant did not kneel with his feet under him, as subsequently became the fashion; he sat tailor-wise. Another Chinese custom—that of joining the palms of the raised hands and clapping them by way of greeting to a superior—came into vogue and was practised for a considerable time. But being associated with the standing system of etiquette, this hand-clapping courtesy ​ceased to be allowed after the introduction of mats. For chairs and mats were incompatible; the former necessarily disappeared when the latter were adopted, and since a matted floor plainly invited a kneeling salutation, the palm-striking obeisance finally disappeared except as preface to a prayer before shrines or in temples. When an inferior official met a superior on the road, the former had to step aside and stand still until the latter passed, and had further to kneel with his hands on the ground whenever he desired to make a remark. The same rule applied to youths and elders irrespectively of rank, and if an official of a class lower than fifth, or a commoner, happened to be riding on horseback when he encountered a superior, he had to dismount and stand aside.
The food of the people during the Nara era consisted of rice, steamed or boiled, millet, barley, fish of various kinds (fresh or salted), sea-weed, vegetables, fruit (pears, chestnuts, and minor varieties), and the flesh of fowl, deer, and wild-boar. Strenuous efforts were made by the Court to enforce the Buddhist commandment against taking life, but the nation steadily eschewed that kind of fanaticism, and even the priests themselves did not obey their own laws. Sake—a fermented liquor made from rice—and tea, which had recently been imported from China, were the chief beverages, and soy (a sauce made from ​beans) and vinegar served for seasoning purposes. In this context reference may be made to a detail which constitutes another point of likeness between the adoption of foreign civilisation in the seventh and eighth centuries and its adoption in modern times. Milk was suggested to the Emperor Kōtoku (645–654) by a Korean envoy as a useful article of medicinal diet, and it found so much favour that at the beginning of the eighth century a "milk section" was established in the medical bureau, and an imperial edict required that butter should be sent to the Court periodically from all parts of the empire. The fancy did not live more than a hundred years, nor was it revived until the eighteenth century. The lower orders enjoyed none of these luxuries. A poem of the period shows that instead of fish, salt was their principal relish; instead of rice, barley or millet their staple article of diet; and instead of clear sake they drank the lees of the brewer's vat diluted with water.
In a peculiarly constructed wooden storehouse attached to the celebrated temple Totai-ji there is preserved a collection of objects from the palaces of the Emperors and Empresses that reigned during the Nara epoch. It would plainly be a false conclusion to regard these things as specimens of the furniture and utensils ordinarily used at the Court of Japan in the eighth century. Had they not been rare and choice in their time, ​they would not have been thought worthy of preservation. But they certainly bear witness to the refinements of the era and to the affinities of its civilisation, just as the ornaments of a French salon in the sixteenth century bear witness to the graces of life at that time and to the Italian influences that then pervaded French æstheticism. Many of the Totai-ji treasures are of Chinese provenance; a few are Indian, and a still smaller number, Persian. China's large contribution might have been expected, for if the Japanese in the seventh and eighth centuries regarded their continental neighbour as the source of everything that was best in matters legislative, ethical, philosophical, political, and literary, they would naturally look to her also for standards of social refinement. The story these relics tell is that the occupants of the Nara palace had their rice served in small covered cups of stone-ware, with céladon glaze—these from Chinese potteries, for as yet the manufacture of vitrifiable glazes was beyond the capacity of Japanese keramists;—ate fruit from deep dishes of white agate; poured water from golden ewers of Persian form, having bird-shaped spouts, narrow necks and bands of frond diaper; played the game of go on boards of rich lacquer, using discs of white jade and red coral for pieces; burned incense in censers of bronze inlaid with gems, and kept the incense in small boxes of Paullownia wood with gold lacquer decoration—these of Japanese make,—or in ​receptacles of Chinese céladon; wrote with camel's hair brushes having bamboo handles, and placed them upon rests of prettily carved coral; employed plates of nephrite to rub down sticks of Chinese ink; sat upon the cushioned floor to read or write, placing the book or paper on a low lectern of wood finely grained or ornamented with lacquer; set up flowers in slender, long-necked vases of bronze with a purple patina; used for pillow a silk-covered bolster stuffed with cotton and having designs embroidered in low relief; carried long, straight, two-edged swords attached to the girdle by strings (not thrust into it, as afterwards became the fashion); kept their writing materials in boxes of coloured or gold lacquer; saw their faces reflected in mirrors of polished metal, having the back repoussé and chiselled in elaborate designs; kept their mirrors in cases lined with brocaded silk; girdled themselves with narrow leather belts, ornamented with plaques of silver or jade and fastened by means of buckles exactly similar to those used in Europe or America to-day; and played on flutes made of bamboo wood. In short, the Shoso-in relics introduce us to a people imbued with a strong taste for the refinements of civilisation, but not yet possessed of artistic and technical skill sufficient to supply their own wants.
In this Nara epoch a legislative attempt was made to restrain all illicit intercourse between the sexes, but it does not appear that the slightest ​success attended the experiment. There is nothing to show that virgin purity was less esteemed in a Japanese maiden of gentle birth than it has ever been esteemed by any nation under any system of ethics. But the recognition extended to concubinage necessarily produced a confusion of principles. From the sovereign down to the artisan, a man's extra-marital relations were limited only by his means and opportunities. The obligation of sexual fidelity rested on the woman alone, and constituted her whole code of morality. She valued virtue, not for virtue's sake, but as part of her duty to some one man either in esse or in posse, and she discharged that duty with remarkable steadfastness whether as a maiden, a mistress, or a wife. But it is easy to see that since society did not scrutinise with any severity her relation to the man claiming her affection, and frowned on her only when she betrayed him, her first concessions to love were often made without much ceremony. The custom of leaving a wife to reside in her parental house had long ceased in practice, but its principle found expression in a rule that when a man married, he must construct special apartments for his bride's accommodation. Another curious canon was that until a girl became betrothed, she must never speak of herself by her family name, and that when lovers parted, the string of the man's under-garment was tied to ​that of the woman, with a promise that the knot should never be loosened till they were reunited. It was also by her betrothed that a maiden's hair, which in girlhood flowed over her shoulders, was for the first time bound with a fillet. This last custom survives in a degraded form until the present day, as will be seen when the time comes to speak of public fêtes in which professional dancing-girls (geisha) act a prominent part.
Japan's borrowings from China were of course liberal in the sphere of literary culture. Having no books of her own, she depended entirely on the library of her neighbour. Compared with the barrenness of her intellectual realm, that library opened up to her an immensely fruitful area of science, philosophy, and belles lettres, and there would be no grounds for surprise had she lost herself in its multitudinous paths. But if we except the engrossing claim that Confucianism made upon her attention, the chief effect produced upon her by Chinese literature was to set her to writing poetry. Throughout the century culminating at the zenith of the Nara epoch, she abandoned herself almost deliriously to that occupation. To turn a couplet deftly became the test not merely of literary education but even of administrative competence. There is difficulty in conveying to the mind of a Western reader any exact idea of the habit that grew out of this poetic extravagance. If at a banquet given by ​the sovereign of England to his Ministers and leading civil and military officials, or at a reception by the President of the United States in the White House, pens and paper were handed round, and all the guests were invited to spend several hours composing versicles on themes set by Mr. McKinley or King Edward, and further, if the pastime were repeated again and again, day after day, until the construction of couplets became an engrossing national occupation, such a state of affairs would represent with tolerable accuracy the custom that began to come into vogue in the middle of the seventh century,—a custom which produced its best results from a literary point of view a hundred years later in the Nara epoch, and continued in an even increasing degree through several generations.
But although this poetic mania is here associated with the introduction of Chinese literature, it did not derive its metric inspiration from that source. The Japanese system of versification is their own, nor did their poets borrow anything from the treasures of Chinese literature. It is a system radically different from the Chinese system; radically different from the system of any other country, Eastern or Western. Uniquely in this one path they ignored their neighbour's influence, and wrote unrhymed lines which derived their poetic character solely from the rhythmic beat of a fixed number of syllables, five followed by ​seven, seven followed by five, in changeless alternation. What Chinese intercourse did was to supply a medium for transcribing these stanzas, and to suggest the custom of composing them as a pastime at social réunions. The art itself had long existed in Japan, but from the middle of the seventh century it became a polite accomplishment. The Japanese stanza defies translation in any other language. It is a verbal melody which cannot be transposed; cannot be played on a foreign instrument. There is virtually no such thing as versified narrative; no subject is treated continuously in varying phases. In Occidental poetry the cadence of the verse is the accompaniment of the idea; in Japanese poetry, the idea is set to the cadence. The Greeks by a laboured organisation of strophe, antistrophe, and epode, strove to impart to their chorus harmonic as well as metrical value. The Japanese, by a regular alternation of syllabic chords, succeeded in combining the effects of music and metre. The embodied idea is seldom more than a mere suggestion; the whisper of a thought pervading the melody. The music is everything. To seek in the productions of such an art high displays of dramatic imagination, is as idle as to render these snatches of music into the rhymed verses of Western metrical art. To form a true conception of Japanese poetry one must read it in the original.
It is easy to understand that in an age when the passion for verbal melody attained such pro-​portions, dancing also must have been in wide favour. There is no Japanese music that will not serve as accompaniment for the Japanese stanza, and the stanza, in turn, adapts itself perfectly to the fashion of the Japanese dance. The law of the unities seems to have prescribed that the cadence of the stanza should melt into the lilt of the song, and that the measure of the song should be worked out by the "woven paces and waving hands" of the dance. That is the inevitable impression produced by Japanese poetry, Japanese music, and Japanese dancing. The affinity between them is so close that it is difficult to tell where one begins and the other ends. The music of words, the music of motion, and the music of song rank equally in popular appreciation. Of course Buddhist music is not included in that description. Buddhist music is a wail, a threnody. It makes no appeal to the natural disposition of the Japanese, and the vogue it obtained from the Nara epoch onwards largely contributed to the growth of a dangerous form of pessimism. The tendency of the Japanese has always been to accompany their feasting and merry-making with music, versifying, and dancing. At the time now under consideration, there was the "winding water fête," when princes, high officials, courtiers, and noble ladies seated themselves by the banks of a rivulet meandering gently through some fair park, and launched tiny ​cups of mulled wine upon the current, each composing a stanza as the little messenger reached him, or drinking its contents by way of penalty for lack of poetic inspiration. There were also the flower festivals—that for the plum-blossoms, that for the iris, and that for the lotus, all of which were instituted in this same Nara epoch—when the composition of couplets was quite as important as the viewing of the flowers. There was further the grand New Year's banquet in the "hall of tranquillity" at the Court, when all officials from the sixth grade downwards sang a stanza of loyal gratitude, accompanying themselves on the koto. Specially remarkable was the utagaki, which in this epoch assumed the dimensions of a grand spectacular display. Hundreds of youths and maidens, wearing blue silk robes with long red girdles, assembled at the palace gate and danced in the presence of the Emperor, the men and women in separate rows; and thereafter continued the performance through the city, singing in union some simple stanza, such as
Crystal-born river, Hakata, thy jewelled stream Flows through ten thousand Times ten thousand ages, pure.
It was an era of refined, effeminate amusements. Wrestling had now become the pursuit of professionals. Aristocrats engaged in no rougher ​pastime than archery, polo, a species of football, hawking and hunting. Everybody gambled. It was in vain that, from the time of the Empress Jito (694–696), edicts were issued against dicing (sugoroku). The vice defied official restraint.
* ↑ See Appendix, note 22.
* ↑ See Appendix, note 23.
* ↑ See Appendix, note 24.
* ↑ See Appendix, note 25.
* ↑ See Appendix, note 26.
* ↑ See Appendix, note 27.
* ↑ See Appendix, note 28.
* ↑ See Appendix, note 29.
* ↑ See Appendix, note 30.
* ↑ See Appendix, note 31.
* ↑ See Appendix, note 32.
* ↑ See Appendix, note 33.
* ↑ ​Note 22.—The Mara of the present day lies mainly to the eastward of the old capital, but the temples occupy their original site.
* ↑ ​Note 23.—A couplet written at that era embodied the popular conception of a journey: "The grandest rice-bowl used at home becomes for the traveller an oak-leaf."
* ↑ ​Note 24.—Temmu (673-686).
* ↑ ​Note 25.—The method of treating children's hair in the Nara epoch was picturesque. At the age of three the little one's hair was cut short but of equal length all over. It was then allowed to grow until it reached the shoulders, at which length it was kept, the hair over the forehead, however, being trimmed so as to form a fringe hanging to the eyebrows. A few years later, a boy's hair was looped up on each side in the shape of a gourd-flower, and a girl's was suffered to grow thenceforth without restraint.
* ↑ ​Note 26.—Japanese antiquarians assert that both men and women of rank wore long veils in early times, and were equally averse to exposing their complexions.
* ↑ ​Note 27.—Another evidence of the fidelity with which Chinese fashions were copied.
* ↑ ​Note 28.—It has been alleged that by striking the palms together when about to worship, a Japanese intends to attract the attention of the deity. The explanation is fanciful and groundless.
* ↑ ​Note 29.—It is built with logs of wood, hexagonal in section, laid horizontally, so that the walls present a deeply corrugated appearance. Though repaired from time to time, this storehouse retains the exact form given to it by its architects nearly twelve centuries ago.
* ↑ ​Note 30.—Out of this rule grew the appellation shinzo (new building) still commonly applied to Japanese wives in the middle classes.
* ↑ ​Note 31.—Mr. Basil H. Chamberlain, in the admirable preface to his "Classical Poetry of the Japanese," explains this point with great clearness, and M. D. E. Aston, in his exhaustive treatise on "Japanese Literature," shows why rhyme would scarcely be possible to a poet using the Japanese language, namely, that as all Japanese words end in one of the five vowels, constant iteration of the same sound would be inevitable.
* ↑ ​Note 32.—This is illustrated by the fact that the Japanese use the same word (uta) to express "song and poem."
* ↑ ​Note 33.—A stringed instrument played with both hands; the fingers of the right hand being armed with ivory tips, and the fingers of the left being used to press the strings.
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